Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Chase, Drummond Percy
CHASE, DRUMMOND PERCY (1820–1902), last principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, born on 14 Sept. 1820 at Château de Saulruit, near St. Omer, was second son of John Woodford Chase of Cosgrave, Northamptonshire. Matriculating at Pembroke College, Oxford on 15 Feb. 1839, he became scholar of Oriel College on 22 May 1839, and was one of four who obtained first-class honours in classics in Michaelmas term, 1841. He graduated B.A. on 25 Nov. 1841, proceeding M.A. on 14 June 1844 and D.D. in 1880, and was ordained deacon in 1844 and priest in 1849. Elected fellow of Oriel College on 1 April 1842, just when the question of John Henry Newman's relation to the Anglican church was at its acutest phase, he retained his fellowship till his death, sixty years afterwards. He was tutor of Oriel from 1847 to 1849 and again from 1860 to 1866. He was senior proctor of the University in 1853, and printed his Latin speech on going out of office on 26 April 1854. He was a select preacher before the university in 1860, and was vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, from 1855 to 1863 and again from 1876 to 1878.
When he began his duties as college tutor, he took the unusual step of printing the substance of his principal course of lectures for the use of his pupils and other Oxford passmen. This was an edition, with translation and notes, of Aristotle's 'Nicomachean Ethics' (1847; 4th edit. 1877). The translation has been twice reprinted alone, in 1890 and again in 1906. He also issued 'A First Logic Book' in 1876, and 'An Analysis of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans' in 1886.
In 1848 Chase became vice-principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, the principal being Philip Bliss [q. v.]. In 1857 he was appointed principal on Bliss's death, and set himself vigorously to reform the place. He would admit no idle or extravagant candidate who was seeking to migrate from a college. But he welcomed diligent and frugal men, whose poverty excluded them from expensive colleges. The institution of the non-collegiate body in 1868, and the foundation of Keble College in 1870, made other and better provision in the university for poor undergraduates. Chase therefore advised the university commissioners of 1877 to merge, on his death, St. Mary Hall in Oriel College, with which it was connected both locally and personally. This suggestion was embodied in the Commissioners' Statutes in 1881, and accordingly, on Chase's death in 1902, St. Mary Hall ceased, after an independent existence of nearly six hundred years.
Chase, between 1854 and 1881, published frequent pamphlets on academic questions, and many occasional sermons preached before the university. In speeches and pamphlets he resisted in 1854, in the interests of poor professional men in country places, the abolition by the university commission of all local and other special qualifications for scholarships and fellowships. A don of the old school, courteous, gentle, and kindly, brimming over with quiet fun and quaint Oxford anecdotes, he died at St. Mary Hall on 27 June 1902. He was buried in Holy well cemetery, Oxford.
He married on 28 June 1859 Caroline Northcote, who died without children in 1904.
[Macleane, Pembroke College, 1897, p. 240; Shadwell's Registrum Orielense, 1902, ii. 438; The Times, 30 June 1902; Guardian, 1902, p. 954; Oxford Times, 5 July 1902; Appreciations by Rev. L. R. Phelps in Oxford Magazine, xxi. 10, and by Rev. R. S. Mylne in Oxford Times, 7 July 1902.]