exported for use as manure. The neighbouring village of Walton, a short distance inland, receives many visitors. The vicinity has yielded numerous Roman remains, and there was a Roman fort in the neighbourhood (now destroyed by the sea), forming part of the coast defence of the Litus Saxonicum in the 4th century.
FELL, JOHN (1625–1686), English divine, son of Samuel Fell,
dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was born at Longworth in Berkshire
and received his first education at the free school at Thame in
Oxfordshire. In 1636 he obtained a studentship at Christ Church,
and in 1640 he was specially allowed by Archbishop Laud on
account of his “known desert,” when wanting one term’s residence,
to proceed to his degree of B.A. He obtained his M.A. in
1643 and took holy orders (deacon 1647, priest 1649). During
the Civil War he bore arms for the king and held a commission
as ensign. In 1648 he was deprived of his studentship by the parliamentary
visitors, and during the next few years he resided
chiefly at Oxford with his brother-in-law, Dr T. Willis, at
whose house opposite Merton College he and his friends Allestree
and Dolben kept up the service of the Church of England
through the Commonwealth.
At the Restoration Fell was made prebendary of Chichester, canon of Christ Church (July 27, 1660), dean (Nov. 30), master of St Oswald’s hospital, Worcester, chaplain to the king, and D.D. He filled the office of vice-chancellor from 1666 to 1669, and was consecrated bishop of Oxford, in 1676, retaining his deanery in commendam. Some years later he declined the primacy of Ireland. Fell showed himself a most capable and vigorous administrator in his various high employments, and a worthy disciple of Archbishop Laud. He restored in the university the good order instituted by the archbishop, which in the Commonwealth had given place to anarchy and a general disregard of authority. He ejected the intruders from his college or else “fixed them in loyal principles.” “He was the most zealous man of his time for the Church of England,” says Wood, “and none that I yet know of did go beyond him in the performance of the rules belonging thereunto.” He attended chapel four times a day, restored to the services, not without some opposition, the organ and surplice, and insisted on the proper academical dress which had fallen into disuse. He was active in recovering church property, and by his directions a children’s catechism was drawn up by Thomas Marshall for use in his diocese. “As he was among the first of our clergy,” says Burnet, “that apprehended the design of bringing in popery, so he was one of the most zealous against it.” He was forward in making converts from the Roman Catholics and Nonconformists. On the other hand, it is recorded to his honour that he opposed successfully the incorporation of Titus Oates as D.D. in the university in October 1679; and according to the testimony of William Nichols, his secretary, he disapproved of the Exclusion Bill. He excluded the undergraduates, whose presence had been irregularly permitted, from convocation. He obliged the students to attend lectures, instituted reforms in the performances of the public exercises in the schools, kept the examiners up to their duties, and himself attended the examinations. He encouraged the students to act plays. He entirely suppressed “coursing,” i.e. disputations in which the rival parties “ran down opponents in arguments,” and which commonly ended in blows and disturbances. He was an excellent disciplinarian and possessed a special talent for the education of young men, many of whom he received into his own family and watched over their progress with paternal care. Tom Browne, author of the Dialogues of the Dead, about to be expelled from Oxford for some offence, was pardoned by Fell on the condition of his translating extempore the 33rd epigram from Martial:—
| “Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.” |
To which he immediately replied with the well-known lines:—
| “I do not love you, Dr Fell, But why, I cannot tell, But this I know full well, I do not love you, Dr Fell.”[1] |
Delinquents, however, were not always treated thus mildly by Fell, and Acton Cremer, for the crime of courting a wife while only a bachelor of arts, was set as an imposition the translation into English of the whole of Scheffer’s history of Lapland. As vice-chancellor, Fell himself visited the drinking taverns and ordered out the students. In the university elections he showed great energy in suppressing corruption.
Fell’s building operations almost rivalled the plans of the great ecclesiastical architects of the middle ages. In his own college he completed in 1665 the north side of Wolsey’s great quadrangle, already begun by his father but abandoned during the Commonwealth; he rebuilt in 1672 the east side of the Chaplain’s quadrangle “with a straight passage under it leading from the cloister into the field,” occupied now by the new Meadow Buildings; the lodgings of the canon of the 3rd stall in the passage uniting the Tom and Peckwater quadrangles (c. 1674); a long building joining the Chaplain’s quadrangle on the east side in 1677–1678; and lastly the great tower gate, begun in June 1681 on the foundation laid by Wolsey and finished in November 1682, to which the bell “great Tom,” after being recast, was transferred from the cathedral in 1683. In 1670 he planted and laid out the Broad Walk. He spent large sums of his own on these works, gave £500 for the restoration of Banbury church, erected a church at St Oswald’s, Worcester, and the parsonage house at Woodstock at his own expense, and rebuilt Cuddesdon palace. Fell disapproved of the use of St Mary’s church for secular purposes, and promoted the building of the Sheldonian theatre by Archbishop Sheldon. He was treasurer during its construction, presided at the formal opening on the 9th of July 1669, and was nominated with Wren curator in July 1670. In the theatre was placed the University Press, the establishment of which had been a favourite project of Laud, which now engaged a large share of Fell’s energy and attention, and which as curator he practically controlled. “Were it not you ken Mr Dean extraordinarily well,” writes Sir L. Jenkins to J. Williamson in 1672, “it were impossible to imagine how assiduous and drudging he is about his press.”[2] He sent for type and printers from Holland, declaring that “the foundation of all success must be laid in doing things well, which I am sure will not be done with English letters.” Many works, including a Bible, editions of the classics and of the early fathers, were produced under his direction and editing, and his press became noted not only in England but abroad. He published annually one work, generally a classical author annotated by himself, which he distributed to all the students of his college on New Year’s day. On one occasion he surprised the Press in printing surreptitiously Aretino’s Postures, when he seized and destroyed the plates and impressions. Ever “an eager defender and maintainer of the university and its privileges,” he was hostile to the Royal Society, which he regarded as a possible rival, and in 1686 he gave an absolute refusal to Obadiah Walker, afterwards the Roman Catholic master of University College, though licensed by James II., to print books, declaring he would as soon “part with his bed from under him” as his press. He conducted it on strict business principles, and to the criticism that more great works were not produced replied that they would not sell. He was, however, not free from fads, and his new spelling (of which one feature was the substitution of i for y in such words as eies, daies, maiest) met with great disapproval.
Fell also did much to encourage learning in the university. While still a young man at Christ Church he had shown both his zeal and his charity by reading gratuitously with the poor and neglected students of the college. He bore himself a high reputation as a Grecian, a Latinist and a philologist, and he found time, in spite of his great public employments, to bring out with the collaboration of others his great edition of St Cyprian in 1682, an English translation of The Unity of the Church in 1681, editions of Nemesius of Emesa (1671), of Aratus and of Eratosthenes (1672), Theocritus (1676), Alcinous on Plato (1677), St Clement’s Epistles to the Corinthians (1677), Athenagoras (1682), Clemens Alexandrinus (1683), St Theophilus of Antioch (1684),
