“that they might enclose the street that lies under the wall from the Watergate in S. Ebbe’s to the little postern in the wall towards the castle, but so that a wall with battlements, like to the rest of the wall of Oxford, be made about the dwelling, beginning at the west side of Watergate, and reaching southward to the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westward as far as the land of the Abbot of Bec in the parish of S. Bodhoc, and then turning again to the northward till it joins with the old wall of the borough, by the east side of the small postern.” In 1245 he made a further grant. “We have given the Friars Minor our island in the Thames, which we bought of Henry, son of Henry Simeon, granting thempower to build a bridge over the arm of the Thames (Trill stream) which runs between the island and their houses, and enclose the island with a wall.”
“that they might enclose the street that lies under the wall from the Watergate in S. Ebbe’s to the little postern in the wall towards the castle, but so that a wall with battlements, like to the rest of the wall of Oxford, be made about the dwelling, beginning at the west side of Watergate, and reaching southward to the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westward as far as the land of the Abbot of Bec in the parish of S. Bodhoc, and then turning again to the northward till it joins with the old wall of the borough, by the east side of the small postern.” In 1245 he made a further grant. “We have given the Friars Minor our island in the Thames, which we bought of Henry, son of Henry Simeon, granting thempower to build a bridge over the arm of the Thames (Trill stream) which runs between the island and their houses, and enclose the island with a wall.”
When it was completed, then, the Convent of the Grey Friars could compare favourably with any convent or college in Oxford, except perhaps S. Frideswide’s or Osney. On the east side of it, where the main entrance lay, at the junction of the present Littlegate Street and Charles Street, was the road leading from Watergate to Preacher’s Bridge; on the South side, Trill Mill stream; on the West, the groves and gardens of Paradise; on the North, as far as West-gate, ran the City wall.
“Their buildings were stately and magnificent; their church large and decent; and their refectory, cloister and libraries all proportionable thereunto.”
“Their buildings were stately and magnificent; their church large and decent; and their refectory, cloister and libraries all proportionable thereunto.”
The traditional site of this church is indicated by Church Place as it is called to-day. The cloisters probably lay to the south of the church, round “Penson’s Gardens.”
As the Franciscans fell away by degrees from the ideal of poverty, so also they succumbed to the desire of knowledge. “I am your breviary, I am your breviary,” S. Francis had cried to a novice who had asked for a Psalter. The true Doctors, he held, were those who with the meekness of wisdom show forth good works for the edification of their neighbours. But the very popularity of their preaching drove his disciples to the study of theology. Their desire not only to obtain converts but also to gain a hold on the thought of the age had led the friars to fasten on the Universities. The same purpose soon led them to establish at Oxford a centre of learning and teaching.
Their first school at Oxford was built by Agnellus of Pisa, and there he persuaded Robert Grossetete, the great reforming bishop of Lincoln, to lecture. Agnellus himself was a true follower of S. Francis and no great scholar. “He never smelt of an Academy orscarce tasted of humane learning.” He was indeed much concerned at the results of Grossetete’s lectures. For one day when he entered this school to see what progress his scholars were making in literature, he found them disputing eagerly and making enquiries whether there was a God. The scandalised Provincial cried out aloud in anger, “Hei mihi! Hei mihi! Fratres! Simplices cœlos penetrant, et literati disputant utrum sit Deus!” The miracles which were afterwards reputed to be performed at the grave of this same excellent friar caused the church of the Grey Friars to be much frequented.
The friars now began to accumulate books and we soon find mention of two libraries belonging to them. The nucleus of them was formed by the books and writings of Grossetete, which he bequeathed to the brethren. And they collected with great industry from abroad Greek, Hebrew and mathematical writings, at that time unknown in England. The fate of this priceless collection of books was enough to make Wood “burst out with grief.” For, when the monasteries had begun to decay, and the monks had fallen into ways of sloth and ignorance and were become “no better than a gang of lazy, fat-headed friars,” they began to sell their books for what they would fetch and allowed the remainder to rot in neglect.
Meanwhile the teaching of such scholars as Grossetete and Adam Marsh (de Marisco), the first of the Order to lecture at Oxford, was not without result. From the school of the Franciscans came forth men who earned for the University great fame throughout Europe. Friars were sent thither to study, not only from Scotland and Ireland, but from France and Acquitaine, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; while many of the Franciscan schools on the Continent drew their teachers from Oxford. Duns Scotus and William Ockham were trained by these teachers; Roger Bacon, the founder of modern scientific enquiry, ended his days as one of the Order. His life, which stretched over the greater portionof the thirteenth century, was passed for the most part at Oxford; his aspirations and difficulties, his failures and achievements form an epitome, as it were, of the mental history of his age.
It was only when he had spent forty years and all his fortune in teaching and scientific research that, having gained the usual reward of scholarship, and being bankrupt in purse, bankrupt in hope, he took the advice of Grossetete, and became a Friar of the Order of S. Francis. “Unheard, buried and forgotten,” as a member of an Order which looked askance on all intellectual labour not theological, he was forbidden to publish any work under pain of forfeiture, and the penance of bread and water. Even when he was commanded by the Pope to write, the friars were so much afraid of the purport of his researches that they kept him in solitude on bread and water, and would not allow him to have access even to the few books and writings available in those days. Science, they maintained, had already reached its perfection; the world enjoyed too much light; why should he trouble himself about matters of which enough was known already? For as an enquirer Bacon was as solitary as that lone sentinel of science, the Tuscan artist in Valdarno. From the moment that the friars settled on the Universities, scholasticism had absorbed the whole mental energy of the student world. Theology found her only efficient rivals in practical studies such as medicine and law.
Yet, in spite of all difficulties and hindrances, so superhuman was Bacon’s energy, and so undaunted his courage, that within fifteen months the three great works, the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus, and the Opus Tertium were written. If this had been true of the Opus Majus alone, and if that work had not been remarkable for the boldness and originality of its views, yet as a mere feat of industry and application it would have stood almost if not quite unparalleled. For the Opus Majus was at once the Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.
Of the Opus Minus the only MS. of the work yet known is a fragment preserved in the Bodleian Library (Digby, No. 218).
The amazing friar met with no reward for his labours. According to one story, indeed, his writings only gained for him a prison from his Order. His works were sold, allowed to rot, or nailed to the desks that they might do no harm. For Bacon’s method of study exposed him to the charge of magic. It was said that he was in alliance with the Evil One, and the tradition arose that through spiritual agency he made a brazen head and imparted to it the gift of speech, and that these magical operations were wrought by him while he was a student at Brazen Nose Hall.
Necromancy, you see,waspractised by the more daring students, for was there not a certain clerk in Billyng Hall who, when he had summoned the Devil into his presence by his art, observed with astonishment that he did reverence when a priest carrying the sacrament passed without. “Thereupon the student was much disturbed and came to the conclusion that God was much the greater and that Christ should be his Lord....”
And later, was not Dr Thomas Allen of Gloucester Hall, the astrologer and mathematician to whom Bodley left his second best gown and cloak—a common sort of bequest in those days—suspected by reason of his figuring and conjuring, so that his servitor found a ready audience when, wishing to impose upon Freshmen and simple people, he used to say that sometimes he would meet the spirits coming up his master’s stairs like bees?
Apart from the tradition of the Brazen Nose, Bacon’s long residence in Oxford left other marks on the nomenclature of the place. Wood tells us that in his day a fragment of the ruined Friary was pointed out as the room where the great wizard had been wont to pursue his studies. And at a later time tradition said that Friar Bacon was wont to use as an observatory the story built over the semi-circular archway of the gate on the south bridge, andit was therefore known as Friar Bacon’s Study. The little “gate-house” must have resembled Bocardo. It was leased to a citizen named Welcome, who added a story to it, which earned it the name of “Welcome’s Folly.” So the bridge came to be called Folly Bridge, and though gate and house have disappeared, the new bridge still retains the name.
Gables in Worcester CollegeGables in Worcester College
The Black and the Grey Friars were followed to Oxford some years later by the White or Carmelite Friars. Nicholas de Meules or Molis, sometime governor of the castle, gave them a house on the west side of Stockwell Street,[17]now part of Worcester College. They would seem, like the other Orders, soon to have forgotten their traditional austerity. Lands accrued to them; they erected suitable buildings with planted groves and walks upon a large and pleasant site. But not content with this, they presently obtained from Edward II. the royal Palace of Beaumont. Thus they presented the curious paradox of an Order of monks who derived their pedigree in regular succession from Elijah, and trod in theory in the footsteps of the prophets who had retired into the desert, living at Oxford in the palace of a king.
“When King Edward I. waged war with the Scots (1304) he took with him out of England a Carmelite friar, named Robert Baston, accounted in his time the most famous poet of this nation, purposely that he should write poetically of his victories. Again, when King Edward II. maintained the same war after the death of his father, he entertained the same Baston for the same purpose. At length the said king encountering Robert Bruce, was forced with his bishops to fly. In which flight Baston telling the king that if he would call upon the Mother of God for mercy he should find favour, he did so accordingly, with a promise then made to her that if he should get from the hands of his enemies and find safety, he would erect some house in England to receive the poor Carmelites.... Soon after, Baston and some others were not wanting to persuade him to give to the Carmelites his palace at Oxford” (1317),
“When King Edward I. waged war with the Scots (1304) he took with him out of England a Carmelite friar, named Robert Baston, accounted in his time the most famous poet of this nation, purposely that he should write poetically of his victories. Again, when King Edward II. maintained the same war after the death of his father, he entertained the same Baston for the same purpose. At length the said king encountering Robert Bruce, was forced with his bishops to fly. In which flight Baston telling the king that if he would call upon the Mother of God for mercy he should find favour, he did so accordingly, with a promise then made to her that if he should get from the hands of his enemies and find safety, he would erect some house in England to receive the poor Carmelites.... Soon after, Baston and some others were not wanting to persuade him to give to the Carmelites his palace at Oxford” (1317),
where Richard Cœur de Lion had been born. Beaumont Palace, whilst it remained in the hands of the Carmelites, was used not merely as a convent for the habitation of twenty-four monks, but also as a place of education for members of this Order throughout England; as well as for seculars who lived there as “commoners.” Cardinal Pole is said to have been educated in this seminary.
The library and the church of the White Friars were unusually fine.
The Austin Friars (or Friars eremite of S. Augustine) came also to Oxford and gradually acquired property and settled “without Smith Gate, having Holywell Street on the south side of it and the chief part of the ground on which Wadham College now stands on the north.”
The Austin Friars were famous for their disputations in grammar, and soon drew to themselves much of the grammatical training of the place. They engaged also in violent philosophical controversies with the other Orders, so that at last they were even threatened with excommunication if they did not desist from their quarrelling. It was in their convent that the weekly general disputations of Bachelors, known for centuries after as “Austins,” were held.
Wadham College, from the GardensWadham College, from the Gardens
In 1262 the Penitentiarian Friars or Brothers of the Sack, so called because they wore sackcloth, obtained from Henry III. a grant of land which formed the parish of S. Budoc and lay to the west of the property of the Franciscans. The Order was soon afterwards suppressed and the Franciscans acquired their house and lands.
The brethren of the Holy Trinity also made a settlement in Oxford (1291). Their house, afterwards known as Trinity Hall, was situated outside the East Gate (opposite Magdalen Hall). They also acquired the old Trinity Chapel adjoining and the surrounding land.
The Trinitarians had, besides, a chapel within the East Gate, which was purchased by Wykeham to make room for New College.
The Crossed or Cruched Friars, after one or two moves, settled themselves in the parish of S. Peter’s in the East.
The older religious Orders were presently stimulated by the example and the success of the friars to make some provision for the education of their monks. But they never aimed at producing great scholars or learned theologians. Historians of their Order and canonists who could transact their legal business were the products which the monastic houses desired.
A Chapter-General held at Abingdon in 1279 imposed a tax on the revenues of all the Benedictine monasteries in the province of Canterbury with a view to establishing a house at Oxford where students of their Order might live and study together. John Giffard, Lord of Brimsfield, helped them to achieve their object.
Gloucester Hall, adjoining the Palace of Beaumont, had been the private house of Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who built it in the year 1260. It passed to Sir John Giffard, who instituted it a “nursery and mansion-place solely for the Benedictines of S. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester.” The buildings were afterwards enlarged to provide room for student-monks from other Benedictine abbeys.Of the lodgings thus erected by the various abbeys for their novices, indications may still be traced in the old monastic buildings which form the picturesque south side of the large quadrangle of Worcester College. For over the doorways of these hostels the half-defaced arms of different monasteries, the griffin of Malmesbury or the Cross of Norwich, still denote their original purpose.
Gateway, Worcester GardensGateway, Worcester Gardens
At the dissolution, the college was for a short while made the residence of the first bishop of Oxford. After his death it was purchased by Sir Thomas White, and by him converted into a hall for the use of his College of S. John. Gloucester Hall, now become S. John Baptist Hall, after a chequered career, was refounded and endowed in 1714 as Worcester College out of the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes. In the latter half of the eighteenth century the hall, library and chapel were built and the beautiful gardens of “Botany Bay” were acquired.
The Benedictines also held Durham Hall, on the site of the present Trinity College, having secured a property of about ten acres with a frontage of about 50 feet (including Kettell Hall) on Broad Street, and 500 feet on the “Kingis hye waye of Bewmounte.” It was here that Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, founded the first public library in Oxford. Bury had studied at Oxford and was the tutor of Edward III.; statesman and churchman, he was above all
Gateway in Garden of Worcester Collegethings a book-lover. He had more books, it is recorded, than all the other bishops put together and, wherever he was residing, so many books lay about his bed-chamber that it was hardly possible to stand or move without treading upon them. In thePhilobiblonthe bishop describes his means and methods of collecting books. In the course of his visitations he dug into the disused treasures of the monasteries, and his agents scoured the Continent for those “sacred vessels of learning.” The collection of books so made he intended for the use of scholars, not merely for himself alone.
“We have long cherished in our heart of hearts,” he writes, “the fixed resolve to found in perpetual charity a hall in the reverend University of Oxford, and to endow it with the necessary revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and, moreover, to enrich the hall with the treasures of our books, that all and every one of them should be in common as regards their use and study, not only to the scholars of the said hall, but by their means to all the students of the aforesaid University for ever.”
“We have long cherished in our heart of hearts,” he writes, “the fixed resolve to found in perpetual charity a hall in the reverend University of Oxford, and to endow it with the necessary revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and, moreover, to enrich the hall with the treasures of our books, that all and every one of them should be in common as regards their use and study, not only to the scholars of the said hall, but by their means to all the students of the aforesaid University for ever.”
And he proceeds to lay down strict regulations based on those of the Sorbonne, for the use and preservation of his beloved books and the catalogue he had made of them.
Richard of Hoton, prior of Durham Monastery, had begun in 1289 the erection of a college building to receive the young brethren from that monastery, whom his predecessor, Hugh of Darlington, had already begun to send to Oxford to be educated. This colony of Durham students it was apparently Richard de Bury’s intention to convert into a body corporate, consisting of a prior and twelve brethren. And in gratitude for the signal defeat of the Scots at Halidon Hill, Edward III. took the proposed college under his special protection. Bury, however, died, and died in debt, so that he himself never succeeded in founding the hall he intended. His successor, Bishop Hatfield, took up the scheme, and entered into an agreement with the prior and convent of Durham for the joint endowment of a college for eight monks and eight secular scholars.This project was completed, by agreement with his executors, after his death (1381).
But what became of the books of the bishop and bibliophile, Richard de Bury? Some of them, indeed, his executors were obliged to sell, but we need not distrust the tradition which asserts that some of them at least did come to Oxford. There, it is supposed, they remained till Durham Hall was dissolved by Henry VIII., when they were dispersed, some going to Duke Humphrey’s library, others to Balliol College, and the remainder passing into the hands of Dr George Owen, who purchased the site of the dissolved college.
Whatever happened to Bury’s books, it is certain that the room which still serves as a library was built in 1417, and it may be taken to form, happily enough, the connecting link between the old monastic house and the modern Trinity College. Some fragments of the original “Domus et clausura” may also survive in the Old Bursary and Common Room.
The stimulating effect of the friars upon the old Orders is shown also by the foundation of Rewley Abbey, of which the main entrance was once north-west of Hythe Bridge Street. Rewley (Locus Regalisin North Osney) was built for the Cistercians.
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., who like the King had often been at Oxford, directed in his will that a foundation should be endowed for three secular priests to pray for his soul. His son Edmund, however, founded an Abbey of regulars instead, Cistercian monks from Thame. He gave sixteen acres to the west of the Abbey for walks and for private use. To represent the twenty-one monks of the foundation, twenty-one elm-trees were planted within the gates, and at the upper end a tree by itself to represent the abbot. It was to this Abbey, then, that the Cistercian monks came up to study, till Archbishop Chichele founded S. Bernard’s for them (1437). The college which Chichele founded for the Bernardines, the “Black” Cistercians who followed the reformed rule of S. Bernard, was built on the east side of S. Giles’, “after the same
Oriel CollegeOriel College
mode and fashion for matters of workmanship as his college of All Souls.” It is the modern college of S. John Baptist. But a large part of the buildings date from Chichele’s foundation, and the statue of S. Bernard still stands in its original niche to recall to the modern student the Bernardines whom he has succeeded.
The Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII., who gave the site to the Cathedral of Christ Church. The ruins were still standing in Wood’s day, “seated within pleasant groves and environed with clear streams.” Only a fragment of a wall and doorway now remain. A memorial stone, purchased from the site of Rewley by Hearne the Antiquarian for half a crown, is preserved in the Ashmolean. It bears the name of Ella Longepée, the benevolent Countess of Warwick, “who made this chapel.”
In addition to the numerous parish churches and convents and colleges, there were now innumerable smaller religious foundations in Oxford. There was the House of Converts; there were several hospitals and hermitages and “Ancherholds”—solitary little cells and cabins standing in the fields and adjoining abbeys or parish churches.
Doorway, Rewley AbbeyDoorway, Rewley Abbey
The House of Converts was founded by Henry III. (1234), and here “all Jews and infidels converted to the Christian faith were ordained to have sufficient maintenance.” After the expulsion of the Jews and when the number of converts began to fail, it was used as a Hall for scholars and known as Cary’s Inn. Later it was the magnificent old Inn, the Blue Boar, which spanned the old south boundary of Little Jewry, Blue Boar, Bear or Tresham Lane. The whole of its site is occupied by the modern Town Hall.
The hospital of S. Bartholomew, which lay about half a mile to the east of the city, was founded by Henry I. for leprous folk. It consisted of one master, two healthful brethren, six lepers and a clerk. The chapel and buildings were given in 1328 by Edward III. to Oriel College. In the fourteenth century forty days’ indulgence or pardon of sins was granted by the Bishop of Lincoln to all who would pay their devotions at the chapel of S. Bartholomew, on the feast of that saint, and give of their charity to the leprous alms-folk. The result was that multitudes resorted there, and the priests and poor people benefited considerably. But after the Reformation the custom died out. Later, it was revived, for charitable reasons, by the Fellows of New College. They changed the day to May-day, and then
“after their grave and wonted manner, early in the morning, they used to walk towards this place. They entered the chapel, which was ready decked and adorned with the seasonable fruits of the year. A lesson was read, and then the fellows sung a hymn or anthem of five or six parts. Thereafter one by one they went up to the altar where stood a certain vessel decked with Tuttyes, and therein offered a piece of silver; which was afterwards divided among the poor men. After leaving the chapel by paths strewn with flowers, they in the open space, like the ancient Druids, the Apollinian offspring, echoed and warbled out from the shady arbours harmonious melody, consisting of several parts then most in fashion.” And Wood adds that “the youth of the city would come here every May-day with their lords and ladies, garlands, fifes, flutes, and drums, to acknowledge the coming in of the fruits of the year, or, as we may say, to salute the great goddess Flora, and to attribute her all praise with dancing and music.”
“after their grave and wonted manner, early in the morning, they used to walk towards this place. They entered the chapel, which was ready decked and adorned with the seasonable fruits of the year. A lesson was read, and then the fellows sung a hymn or anthem of five or six parts. Thereafter one by one they went up to the altar where stood a certain vessel decked with Tuttyes, and therein offered a piece of silver; which was afterwards divided among the poor men. After leaving the chapel by paths strewn with flowers, they in the open space, like the ancient Druids, the Apollinian offspring, echoed and warbled out from the shady arbours harmonious melody, consisting of several parts then most in fashion.” And Wood adds that “the youth of the city would come here every May-day with their lords and ladies, garlands, fifes, flutes, and drums, to acknowledge the coming in of the fruits of the year, or, as we may say, to salute the great goddess Flora, and to attribute her all praise with dancing and music.”
The income of the hospital had previously been much augmented by the relics which it was fortunate enough to possess. S. Edmund the Confessor’s comb, S. Bartholomew’s skin, as well as his much revered image, the bones of S. Stephen and one of the ribs of S. Andrew the apostle, all helped to draw to this shrinewithout the walls the worship and the offerings of the sick and the devout. It is difficult to realise with what reverential awe men regarded the jaw-bone of an ancient cenobite, the tooth or even the toe-nail of a saint or martyr. Charms, in those days, were considered more efficacious than drugs, and the bones of saints were the favourite remedies prescribed by the monkish physicians. Comb your hair with this comb of Saint Edmund, then, and you would surely be cured of frenzy or headache; apply the bones of S. Stephen to your rheumatic joints, and your pains would disappear. So it was most firmly believed; and faith will remove mountains. There was a saint for every disease. To touch the keys of S. Peter or to handle a relic of S. Hubert was deemed an effectual mode of curing madness. S. Clare, according to monkish leechcraft, cured sore eyes; S. Sebastian the plague, and S. Apollonia the toothache. The teeth of S. Apollonia, by the way, were by a fortunate dispensation almost as numerous as the complaint which she took under her charge was common.
It is said that Henry VI., disgusted at the excess of this superstition, ordered all who possessed teeth of that illustrious saint to deliver them to an officer appointed to receive them. Obedient crowds came to display their saintly treasures, and lo! a ton of the veritable teeth of S. Apollonia were thus collected together. Were her stomach, says Fuller, proportionate to her teeth, a country would scarce afford her a meal.
The relics at S. Bartholomew’s were so highly prized that Oriel College thought it desirable to remove them to their church of S. Mary—where more people might have the benefit of them. S. Bartholomew’s hospital was used as a common pest-house for the plague in 1643, and shortly after was completely demolished. The chapel fared no better, for it was put to base uses by the Parliamentarians, and the roof, which was of lead, was melted down to provide bullets for “the true Church Militant.”
The buildings and chapel were, however, restored by the patrons,Oriel College. If you follow the Cowley Road towards Cowley Marsh, you will find on your left, opposite the College cricket grounds, and just short of the Military College and barracks, a ruined building which is the old chapel of S. Bartholomew, and contains the screen put up in the time of the Commonwealth. The letters O. C., 1651, mark it. They stand for Oriel College, not Oliver Cromwell, we must suppose.
There was a hospital in Stockwell Street, at the back of Beaumont Palace; there was a hospital of Bethlehem at the north end of S. Giles’ Church and Alms-house Place in Holywell. Of hermitages we may mention that known as S. Nicholas Chapel on the west side of South Bridge. The hermits who lived there successively were called the hermits of Grand Pont. They passed their lives, we are told, in continual prayer and bodily labour—“in prayer against the vanities of the world, for poor pilgrims and passengers that steered their course that way, receiving of them something of benevolence for that purpose; in bodily labour by digging their own graves and filling them up again, as also in delving and making highways and bridges.”
“Our Lady in the wall” was the name of another hermitage near S. Frideswide’s Grange, which was in great repute at one time for the entertainment of poor pilgrims who came to be cured by the waters of S. Edmund’s well (Cowley Place).
The hospital of S. John Baptist was founded some time before the end of the thirteenth century for the relief of poor scholars and other miserable persons. Among the property granted or confirmed to it by Henry III. in a very liberal charter, was the mill known as King’s Mill at the Headington end of the path now called Mesopotamia, because it runs between the two branches of the river.
As a site for rebuilding the hospital the brethren were given (1231) the Jews’ Garden, outside the East Gate of Oxford, but it was provided that a space should be reserved for a burial-groundfor the Jews. This ground formed part of the present site of Magdalen College, and part of the site of the Physic Garden, which lies on the other side of the High Street, facing the modern entrance to that college. The latter site was that reserved for the Jews’ cemetery; the hospital buildings were erected on the other portion. When Waynflete began to enlarge and remodel his foundation of Magdalen Hall (1456), he obtained a grant from the king whereby the hospital (which had ceased to fulfil its purpose) and its possessions were assigned to the President and Fellows of the Hall.
Two years later a commission was appointed by the Pope, which confirmed the suppression of the hospital and its incorporation in the college which Waynflete had been licensed to found,
“whereby he proposed to change earthly things to heavenly, and things transitory to things eternal, by providing in place of the Hospital a College of a President, secular scholars and other ministers for the service of God and the study of theology and philosophy; of whom some are to teach these sciences without fee at the cost of the College.”
“whereby he proposed to change earthly things to heavenly, and things transitory to things eternal, by providing in place of the Hospital a College of a President, secular scholars and other ministers for the service of God and the study of theology and philosophy; of whom some are to teach these sciences without fee at the cost of the College.”
Of the buildings which were once part of the old hospital very little remains. In the line of the present college, facing the street, a blocked-up doorway to the west of the tower marks one of the entrances to the hospital. And Wood was probably correct in saying that the college kitchen was also part of the original fabric. There is a little statue of a saint over a doorway inside the kitchen which appears to bear out this statement.
The various religious Orders were, then, well represented at Oxford. Their influence on the University was considerable; their relations with it not always amicable. At first, doubtless, they did much to stimulate mental activity, whilst the friendship which Grossetete, who as Bishop of Lincoln exercised a sort of paternal authority over the University, manifested towards his “faithful counsellor,” Adam Marsh, and the Franciscans in general, helpedto reconcile their claims with the interests of the University. But the University was always inclined to be jealous of them; to regard them bitterly, and not without reason, as grasping bodies, who were never tired of seeking for peculiar favours and privileges and always ready to appeal to the Pope on the least provocation. Before long, indeed, it became evident that their object was to gain control of the University altogether. And this endeavour was met by a very strenuous and bitter campaign against them. For, as at Paris, the friars soon outlived their welcome, and as at Paris, it was deemed advisable to set a limit to the number of friar doctors and to secure the control of the University to the regular graduates.[18]
The friars who were sent up to Oxford had usually completed their eight years’ study of Arts in the Friars’ schools, and were probably chosen for the promise they had shown in the course of their earlier studies. Their academic studies were confined to the Faculty of Theology, in its wide mediæval sense, and of Canon Law, the hand-maid of theology. But though the regulars were for the most part subject to the same regulations as the secular students in these faculties, yet the Orders were bound before long to find themselves in antagonism with the customs of the University. The rules of the Preaching Friars forbade them to take a degree in Arts; the University required that the student of theology should have graduated in Arts. The issue was definitely raised in 1253, and became the occasion of a statute, providing that for the future no one should incept in Theology unless he had previously ruled in Arts in some University and read one book of the Canon, or of the Sentences, and publicly preached in the University. This statute was challenged some fifty years later by the Dominicans, and gave rise to a bitter controversy which involved the Mendicant Orders inmuch odium. The Dominicans appealed first to the King and then to the Pope, but the award of the arbitrators appointed upheld the statute. The right of granting dispensations, however, or graces to incept in Theology, to those who had not ruled in Arts, was reserved to the Chancellor and Masters. A clause which prohibited the extortion of such “graces” by means of the letters of influential persons was inserted, but was not altogether effective. Certain friars who had used letters of this kind are named in a proclamation of the year 1358. “These are the names of the wax-doctors who seek to extort graces from the University by means of letters of lords sealed with wax, or because they run from hard study as wax runs from the face of fire. Be it known that such wax-doctors are always of the Mendicant Orders, the cause whereof we have found; for by apples and drink, as the people fables, they draw boys to their religion, and do not instruct them after their profession, as their age demands, but let them wander about begging, and waste the time when they could learn in currying favour with lords and ladies.”
From an educational point of view no doubt the University was right in insisting on the preliminary training in Arts.
Roger Bacon speaks with contempt of the class that was springing up in his day—people who studied theology and nothing but theology, “and had never learnt anything of real value. Ignorant of all parts and sciences of mundane philosophy, they venture on the study of philosophy which demands all human wisdom. So they have become masters in theology and philosophy before they were disciples.”
The tendency and the danger of our modern educational system is to specialise, not in theology but in science, without any proper previous training in the humanities.
Whilst the University was engaged in desperate combat with the friars in defence of its system, the regulars had succeeded in securing almost a monopoly of learning. The same fight and thesame state of affairs prevailed at Paris. And just as at Paris in order to save the class of secular theologians from extinction, Robert de Sorbonne established his college (1257) for secular clerks, so now at Oxford, Walter de Merton took the most momentous step in the history of our national education by founding a college for twenty students of Theology or Canon Law, who not only were not friars or monks, but who forfeited their claims to his bounty if they entered any of the regular Orders. And that his object was achieved the names of Walter Burley, the Doctor Perspicuus, Thomas Bradwardine, the profound doctor, and perhaps John Wycliffe stand forth to prove.
As an institution for the promotion of academical education under a collegiate discipline but secular guidance, the foundation of Merton College was the expression of a conception entirely new in England. It deserves special consideration, for it became the model of all other collegiate foundations, and determined the future constitution of both the English Universities.
Walter de Merton was born at Merton in Surrey. He studied at Oxford and won such high honour with the King that he was made Chancellor of the kingdom. Ranged on the side opposite to that of Simon de Montford, he was enabled perhaps by the very success of his opponent and the leisure that so came to him, to perfect the scheme which he had early begun to develop. At first he set aside his estates of Malden, Farleigh and Chessington to support eight of his young kinsmen in study at the University.
But in 1263 he made over his manor-house and estate of Malden to a “house of Scholars of Merton,” with the object of supporting twenty students preferably at Oxford.
The first statutes were granted in the following year. The scholars in whom the property of this house was vested were not allowed to reside within its walls for more than one week in the year, at the annual audit. The house was to be occupied by a Warden and certain brethren or Stewards. It was their business to
Old Gateway, Merton College Herbert Railton OxfordOld Gateway, Merton College Herbert Railton Oxford
administer the estate and pay their allowances to the scholars. The scholars themselves were all originally nephews of the founder. Their number was to be filled up from the descendants of his parents, or failing them, other honest and capable young men, with a preference for the diocese of Winchester. They were to study in some University where they were to hire a hall and live together as a community. It was in the very year of the secession to Northampton that the statutes were issued, and it would have been obviously inexpedient to bind the students to one University or one town. The Studium might be removed from Oxford or the scholar might find it desirable to migrate from that University, to Stamford, Cambridge, or even Paris. The founder, indeed, in view of such a possibility did acquire a house at Cambridge for his college (Pythagoras Hall).
The little community thus established at Oxford was to live simply and frugally, without murmuring, satisfied with bread and beer, and with one course of flesh or fish a day.
A second body of statutes given to the community in 1270 fixed their abode definitely at Oxford and regulated their corporate life more in detail. A sub-warden was now appointed to preside over the students in Oxford, as well as one to administer at Malden.
Strict rules of discipline were laid down. At meals all scholars were to keep silence save one, who was to read aloud some edifying work. All noisy study was forbidden. If a student had need to talk, he must use Latin. In every room one Socius, older and wiser than the others, was to act as Præpositus, control the manners and studies of the rest and report on them. To every twenty scholars a monitor was chosen to enforce discipline. One among so many was not found to suffice, and by the final statutes of Merton one monitor to ten was appointed. Thus originated the office of Decanus (Dean).
A new class of poor students—“secondary scholars”—was also now provided for. They were to receive sixpence a week eachfrom Michaelmas to Midsummer, and live with the rest at Oxford. In these secondary scholars may be seen the germ of the distinction, so characteristic of English colleges, between the full members of the society, afterwards known as Fellows or Socii, and the scholars or temporary foundationers. Socii originally meant those who boarded together in the same hall. It was the founder of Queen’s who first used the word to distinguish full members of the society from foundationers, who were still later distinguished as “scholares.” Wykeham followed his example, distinguishing theverus et perpetuus sociusfrom the probationer.
And from these secondary scholars it is probable that a century later Willyot derived his idea of the institution of a separate class ofPortionistae, the Merton Postmasters. They originally received a “stinted portion,” compared with the scholars.
Merton became Chancellor once more on the death of Henry. He was practically Regent of the Kingdom till the return of Edward from the Crusades. As soon as he resigned the seals of office in 1274, he set himself to revise the statutes of his college at Oxford, before taking up his duties as Bishop of Rochester.
The wardens, bailiffs and ministers of the altar were now transferred from Malden to Oxford, which was designated as the exclusive and permanent home of the scholars. The statutes now given remained in force till 1856, and are, to quote the verdict of the late warden,
“a marvellous repertory of minute and elaborate provisions governing every detail of college life. The number and allowances of the scholars; their studies, diet, costume, and discipline; the qualifications, election and functions of the warden; the distribution of powers among various college officers; the management of the college estates and the conduct of the college business are here regulated with remarkable sagacity. The policy which dictates and underlies them is easy to discern. Fully appreciating the intellectual movement of his age, and unwilling to see the paramount control of it in the hands of the religious Orders—the zealous apostles of papal supremacy—Walter de Merton resolved to establish within theprecincts of the University a great seminary of secular clergy, which should educate a succession of men capable of doing good service in Church and State.“The employment of his scholars was to be study—not theclaustralis religioof the older religious Orders, nor the more practical and more popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and Franciscans. He forbade them ever to take vows; he enjoined them to maintain their corporate independence against foreign encroachments; he ordained that all should apply themselves to studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering on a course of theology; and he provided special chaplains to relieve them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even encouraged their going forth into the great world. No ascetic obligations were laid on them, but residence and continual study were strictly prescribed, and if any scholar retired from the college with the intention of giving up study, or even ceased to study diligently, his salary was no longer to be paid. If the scale of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was chiefly because the founder intended the number of scholars to be constantly increased as the revenues of the house might be enlarged.”
“a marvellous repertory of minute and elaborate provisions governing every detail of college life. The number and allowances of the scholars; their studies, diet, costume, and discipline; the qualifications, election and functions of the warden; the distribution of powers among various college officers; the management of the college estates and the conduct of the college business are here regulated with remarkable sagacity. The policy which dictates and underlies them is easy to discern. Fully appreciating the intellectual movement of his age, and unwilling to see the paramount control of it in the hands of the religious Orders—the zealous apostles of papal supremacy—Walter de Merton resolved to establish within theprecincts of the University a great seminary of secular clergy, which should educate a succession of men capable of doing good service in Church and State.
“The employment of his scholars was to be study—not theclaustralis religioof the older religious Orders, nor the more practical and more popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and Franciscans. He forbade them ever to take vows; he enjoined them to maintain their corporate independence against foreign encroachments; he ordained that all should apply themselves to studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering on a course of theology; and he provided special chaplains to relieve them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even encouraged their going forth into the great world. No ascetic obligations were laid on them, but residence and continual study were strictly prescribed, and if any scholar retired from the college with the intention of giving up study, or even ceased to study diligently, his salary was no longer to be paid. If the scale of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was chiefly because the founder intended the number of scholars to be constantly increased as the revenues of the house might be enlarged.”
In this foundation Walter De Merton was the first to express the only true idea of a college. Once expressed, it was followed by every succeeding founder. The collegiate system revolutionised University life in England. Merton was never tired of insisting upon the one great claim which his community should have to the loyalty, affection and service of its members.
It was this idea which has produced all that is good in the system. To individual study in the University schools was added common life; to private aims the idea of a common good. “The individual is called to other activities besides those of his own sole gain. Diversities of thought and training, of taste, ability, strength and character, brought into daily contact, bound fast together by ties of common interest, give birth to sympathy, broaden thought, and force enquiry, that haply in the issue may be formed that reasoned conviction and knowledge, that power of independentthought, to produce which is the great primary aim of our English University education” (Henderson).
The founder, who had long been busy acquiring property in Oxford, had impropriated the Church of S. John the Baptist for the benefit of the college, and several houses in its immediate neighbourhood were made over to the scholars. The site thus acquired (1265-8) became their permanent home and was known henceforth as Merton Hall.
Of the buildings which were now erected and on which the eyes of the founder may have rested in pride and hope, little now remains. The antique stone carving over the college gate, the great north door of the vestibule of the Hall, with its fantastic tracery of iron, perhaps the Treasury and Outer Sacristy are relics of the earliest past. But Chapel, Hall, Library and Quadrangle are later than the Founder.
As if to emphasise the ecclesiastical character of the English college, he had begun at once to rebuild the parish church as a collegiate church. The high altar was dedicated in the year of his death, 1277; the rest of the chapel is of later dates.
The choir belongs to the end of the thirteenth century (1297), (Pure Decorated); the transepts (Early Decorated, with later Perpendicular windows and doors) were finished in 1424, but begun perhaps as early as the choir; and the massive tower, with its soaring pinnacles, a fine specimen of Perpendicular work, was completed in 1451.
It will be noticed that the chapel has no nave, but that, probably in imitation of William of Wykeham’s then recently finished naveless chapel at New College, the nave which had evidently been intended was omitted at Merton (after 1386). Two arches blocked with masonry in the western wall and the construction of the west window indicate this original intention of adding a nave.
The old thirteenth century glass in the Geometrical windows of the chancel is of great interest. The arms of Castile and the portrait
Oriel CollegeOriel College
of Elinor of Castile (d. 1290) will be noticed. Merton Chapel is very rich both in glass and brasses.
On entering the college you are struck at once by the fact that Merton is not as other colleges arranged on a preconceived plan. But the irregular and disconnected arrangement of the buildings of the quadrangle are themselves suggestive of the fact that it was from Merton and the plans of its founder that the college quadrangles may trace their origin; as it is from Merton that they derive their constitution. The hall, the chapel, the libraries and the living rooms, as essentials for college life, were first adopted here, and these buildings were disposed in an unconnected manner about a quadrangular court after the fashion of the outer Curia of a monastery. The regular disposition of college quadrangles was first completed by Wykeham, and whilst other colleges have conformed to the perfected shape, Merton remains in its very irregularity proudly the prototype, the mother of colleges.
Of the college buildings the most noteworthy is the library, the oldest example of the mediæval library in England. It was the gift of William Rede, Bishop of Chichester (1377). The dormer and east windows and the ceiling are later, but the library as it is, though enriched by the improvements of succeeding centuries, beautiful plaster-work and panelling, noble glass and a sixteenth century ceiling, is not very different from that in which the mediæval student pored over the precious manuscripts chained to the rough sloping oaken desks which project from the bookcases. These bookcases stand out towards the centre of the room and form, with a reader’s bench opposite to each of the narrow lancet windows, a series of reader’s compartments. How the books were fastened and used in those days, you may gain a good idea by examining the half case numbered forty-five.
It was in this library that the visitors of Edward VI. took their revenge on the schoolmen and the popish commentators by destroying in their stupid fanaticism not only innumerable works of theology, but also of astronomy and mathematical science. “Acart-load,” says Thomas Allen, an eye-witness, “of such books were sold or given away, if not burnt, for inconsiderable nothings.” In this library Anthony Wood was employed in the congenial occupation of “setting the books to rights,” and here is preserved, according to tradition, the very astrolabe which Chaucer studied. And, for a fact, a beautiful copy of the first Caxton edition of his works is stored in the sacristy—a building which up till 1878 was used as a brew-house.
The charming inner quadrangle, in which the library is, rejoices in the name “Mob” Quad—a name of which the derivation has been lost. Like the Treasury, it probably dates from about 1300. The high-pitched roof of the latter, made of solid blocks of ashlar, is one of the most remarkable features of Merton. The outer sacristy is on the right of the main entrance passage to Mob Quad, and thence an old stone staircase leads to the Treasury or Muniment room. Another passage from the front quadrangle leads to Patey’s Quad. The Fellows’ Quadrangle was begun in 1608, and the large gateway with columns of the four orders (Roman-Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite) is typical of the architectural taste of the times. The quadrangle itself, very similar to that of Wadham, is one of the most beautiful and charming examples of late Gothic imaginable. It would have been a fortunate thing if this had been the last building added to Merton. But it was destined that the taste of the Victorian era should be painfully illustrated by the new buildings which were erected in 1864 by Mr Butterfield. The architect was eager and the college not disinclined at that time to destroy part of the library and the Mob Quad. The abominable building which replaced the beautiful enclosure known as the Grove, combines with the new buildings of Christ Church to spoil what might have been one of the most beautiful effects of water, wood and architecture in the world—the view of Oxford from the Christ Church and Broad Walks.
Inspired by the example of Merton and a similar dislike ofmonks and friars, Walter de Stapeldon, the great Bishop of Exeter, ordained that the twelve scholars whom he originally endowed (1314) should not study theology or be in orders. The society, afterwards known as Exeter College, was housed at first in Hart Hall and Arthur Hall, in the parish of S. Peter in the East, and was intended by the founder to be called Stapeldon Hall. In the following year he moved his scholars, eight of whom, he stipulated, must be drawn from Devonshire and four from Cornwall, to tenements which he had bought between the Turl and Smith Gate, just within the walls. The founder added a rector to their number and gave them statutes, based on those of Merton, which clearly indicated that his object was to give a good education to young laymen. The college was practically refounded in 1566 by Sir William Petre, a successful servant of the Tudors. Of the pre-reformation buildings, nothing unhappily remains save a fragment of the tower. The rest is seventeenth century or nineteenth, the front on Turl Street dating from 1834, and the unlovely “modern Gothic” front on Broad Street from 1854. Sir Gilbert Scott, who designed the latter, destroyed the old chapel and replaced it with a copy of the Sainte Chapelle.
Ten years later another daughter of Merton was born. For in 1324 Adam de Brome, Almoner of Edward II. and Rector of S. Mary’s, obtained the royal licence to found a college of scholars, Bachelor Fellows, who should study theology and the Ars Dialectica. The statutes of this “Hall of the Blessed Mary at Oxford,” afterwards known as King’s Hall and Oriel College, were copied almost verbatim from those of Merton. Tackley’s Inn, on the south side of High Street (No. 106), and Perilous Hall, on the north side of Horsemonger, now Broad Street, were purchased for the College. But in 1326 it was refounded by the King, endowed with the advowson and rectory of the Church of S. Mary, and ordered to be governed by a Provost, chosen by the scholars from their own number. The first Provost was the founder, who was also Rector of S. Mary’s, andthe society now established itself in the Rectory House on the south side of the High Street (St Mary Hall), at the north end of Schidyard (Oriel) Street. The college gradually acquired property stretching up to St John’s (now Merton) Street, and in so doing became possessed of the tenement at the angle of Merton and Oriel Street called /p, or, for some uncertain reason, but probably on account of its possessing one of the architectural features indicated by that word, La Oriole. It was here, then, that the society fixed its abode and from this hall it took its name. The present front quadrangle, resembling the contemporary front quadrangles of Wadham and University, and endowed with a peculiar charm by the weather-stained and crumbling stone, stands on the site of La Oriole and other tenements. It was completed in the year of the outbreak of the Civil War,Regnante Carolo, as the legend on the parapet between the hall and chapel records, and the statue of Charles I. above it indicates. The Garden Quadrangle was added in the eighteenth century.
The monks and friars have gone their way and the place of their habitation knows them no more. But they have left their mark upon Oxford in many ways. Though their brotherhoods were disbanded by Henry VIII. and most of their buildings demolished, the quadrangles and cloisters of many colleges recall directly the monastic habit, and the college halls the refectory of a convent. Whilst the College of S. John dates back from the scholastic needs of the Cistercians, and the Canterbury Quad and gate at Christ Church keep alive by their names the recollection of the Canterbury college founded by Archbishop Islip (1363) for the Benedictines of Canterbury, the old hostels, which were once erected to receive the Benedictine students from other convents, survive in those old parts of Worcester which lie on your left as you approach the famous gardens of that college. Trinity College occupies the place of Durham, and Wadham has risen amid the ruins of a foundation of Augustines, whose disputative powers were kept in memory in the exercises of theUniversity schools down to 1800. The monks of S. Frideswide’s Priory, S. George’s Church, the Abbey of Osney, have all disappeared with the friaries. But Christ Church is a magnificent monument to the memory of the abbots and canons regular whom it has succeeded. The very conception of an academical college was no doubt largely drawn from the colleges of the regular religious Orders, which, unlike those of the Mendicants, were entirely designed as places of study.