195
NEW COLLEGE.
I96
duties — the masses and canonical hours were chiefly
performed by the hired chaplains. But the scholars
are required to go to mass daily ; it is the first Oxford
College where daily chapel is required. . . .
Wykeham was indeed the first College-founder, at Oxford at all events, who conceived the idea of making his college not a mere eleemosynary institu- tion, but a great ecclesiastical corporation, which should vie both in the splendour of its architecture and the dignity of its corporate life with the Cathedral
chapters and the monastic houses The
warden of New College was to live, like an abbot, in a house of his own, within the College walls, but with a separate hall, kitchen and establishment. His salary of £40 was princely by comparison with the 40.C, with commons, assigned to the master of Balliol, or even the forty marks allotted to the warden of Merton
Besides the commons every Fellow received an annual "livery," or suit of clothes, suitable to his University rank, but also of uniform cut and colour ; and the rooms were no doubt rudely furnished at the expense of the College. ....
The statutes contain a comprehensive list of pro- hibited amusements. The founder's experience of human nature told him for instance that " after bodily refection by the taking of meat and drink, men are made more inclined to scurrilities, base talk, and (what is worse) detraction and strife," he accordingly provides that on ordinary clays after the loving cup has gone round, there is to be no lingering in hall after dinner or supper (except for the usual " potation " at curfew), but on festivals and other winter-nights, "on which, in honour of God and his Mother, or some other saint," there is a fire in the hall, the Fellows are allowed to indulge in singing or reading "poems, chronicles of the realm, and wonders of the world. "
Such were the modest amusements of the first Wykehamists. How was the bulk of their time passed or meant to be passed ? It must be remem- bered that Colleges were, in the first instance, not intended for teaching-institutions at all ; their mem- bers resorted for lectures to the public schools. Wykeham is the first Oxford founder who contem- plates any instruction being given to his scholars in College * By his provisions on this head he became the founder of the Oxford tutorial system. Both at Paris and in Oxford, College teaching was destined, in process of time, practically to destroy University teaching in the Faculty of Arts. But the process took place in totally different ways. The form which College-teaching has assumed in Oxford was in- augurated by Wykeham. He, or his academical advisers, saw the unsuitableness of formal lectures in the public schools as a means of teaching mere boys. Hence he provides that for the first three years of residence the scholar was to be placed under the instruction of a tutor ( " Informator ") selected from the senior fellows. ....
The character of the College during the earlier part of its history was exactly of the kind which the founder designed. In Wykeham's day the Scholastic Philosophy and Theology were already in their decadence. The history of mediaeval thought, so far as Oxford is concerned, ends with that suppression of Wycliffism in 1411, which both Wykeham and his College (though not quite free from the prevalent
- Except to the grammar-boys at Merton, and the "poor
boys " at Queen's.
Lollardism) had contributed to bring about. New
College produced not schoolmen and theologians
like Merton, but respectable and successful eccle-
siastics in abundance— foremost among them, Henry
Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, the founder of
All Souls'. It is a characteristic circumstance that a
New College man, John Wytenham, was at the head
of the Delegacy for condemning Wycliffe's books in
141 1, all the other Doctors being monks or friars.
On the other hand, the one piece of reform which Wykeham did seek to introduce into Oxford bore fruit in due season. New College, the one College which was recruited exclusively from a great classical school, became the home of what may be called the first phase of the Renaissance movement which showed itself in Oxford. It is during the latter part of Thomas Chaundler's Wardenship (1454- 1475) that traces of this movement became apparent. Chaundler's own style, as is shown by his published letters to Bishop Bekynton of Wells (himself a Wykehamist and bene- factor of the College 1 , was more correct than the ordinary " Oxford Latin " of his day ; and sometime before his death he brought into the College as " Prselector " the first Oxford teacher of Greek, the Italian scholar Vitelli, who remained till 1488 or 1489, and must have imparted at least the rudiments of Greek and the desire for further knowledge to William Grocyn, the great Wykehamist, with whose name the "Oxford Renaissance" is indissolubly associated. Archbishop Warham, the patron of Erasmus (to whom the College owes the panelling of its Hall) also deserves mention among New College Humanists.
But if New College welcomed and fanned the first faint breath of the Rennaissance air in Oxford wherever religion and politics were concerned, she retained that character of rigid and immobile Con- servatism which the founder had sought to give it.
It produced the disreputable John London (warden 1526-1542), who was foremost in the prosecution of Protestant heretics in Oxford, though afterwards employed in the dirty work of collecting evidence against the Monasteries. But the most disinterested and most learned opponents of the Reformation were also bred in Wykeham's Colleges— the men who were ejected or fled under Edward VI. rose to high prefer- ment under Mary, and became victims again under Elizabeth— men like Harpesfield the ecclesiastical historian, Pits the bibliographer, and Nicholas Saunders, the Papal Legate, who organized the Irish Insurrection of 1579.
Ecclesiastically and politically the Great Rebellion found the College again on the Conservative side. In 1642 the then Warden, Dr. Robert Pincke, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, took the lead in preparing Oxford to resist the Parliamentary forces. The Uni- versity train-bands were wont to drill " under his eyes " in the front Quadrangle. The Cloisters were converted into a magazine ; and the New College school-boys, being then turned out of their usual school, were removed "to the choristers' chamber at the east end of the common hall of the said College : it was then a dark, nasty room, and very unfit for such a purpose, which made the scholars often com- plaine, but in vaine. " These are the words of Anthony Wood, then a little boy of eleven, and a pupil in the school.
On the arrival of the Puritan Visitors in 1647, no College gave so much trouble as New College. All but unanimously the members of the foundation declared that it was contrary to their oaths to submit to any Visitor who was an actual {i.e. resident) member
