469
ST. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE.
470
and wisely, and lived as Bishop of Bath and Wells,
and later of Winchester, to the beginning of the
eighteenth century.
The most interesting period of the College history was during the Reigns of the Stuarts. The same spirit of devotion to the Church and loyalty to the throne which had animated Laud and Juxon still breathed in their successors. Tobias Rustat, esquire, yeoman of the Robes to Charles II., and under House- keeper of Hampton Court, left a large sum to endow loyal lectures — two on "the day of the horrid and most execrable murder of that most glorious Prince and Martyr ; " one to be read by the Dean of Divinity, and the other by "some one of the most ingenious Scholars or Fellows whom the President shall ap- point," setting forth the "barbarous cruelty of that unparalleled parricide ; " one by the Dean of Law on October 23rd, " which was the day wherein Re- bellion did appear solemnly armed against Majesty ; " and a fourth on the 29th of May, "setting forth the glory and happiness of that day," which saw the birth of Charles II. and his "triumphant return." There is in the College library a curious portrait of Charles I., over which, in a minute hand, several Psalms are written. Tradition has it that when the " merry monarch " visited Oxford he asked for this eccentric piece of work, and that when on leaving, in recogni- tion of his loyal welcome, he offered to give the Fellows anything that they should ask, they declared that no gift could be so precious as the restoration to them of the portrait of his father. The story, true or not, could only be told of a College which was famous as the home of devoted loyalty to the Stuarts. It was Dr. Peter Mews who lent his carriage horses to draw the Royal canon to Sedgmoor.
Almost within living memory the Fellows of St.
John's in their Common Room, " a large handsome
room, the scene of a great deal of learning and a great
many puns," toasted the king " over the water." Up
till the middle of the present century, indeed, it was
a College of survivals. The old loyal lectures were
read, the old "gaudies" held, the old rules main-
tained.
During the period of the Tractarian movement the College played no unimportant part. Its President, Dr. Philip Wynter, was Vice-Chancellor during the most critical years. One of its tutors, the Rev. H. B. Wilson (Bampton Lecturer, 1851) was prominent in controversy, and another Fellow, the Rev. H. A. Woodgate, was "a centre of influence in Oxford and in the country " (Dean Church, Oxford Movement, p. 293). Even within recent years the College has been accused (by an observer who loved bitterness and epigram better than enquiry) of being ' corroded with ecclesiasticism. ' It is a charge at which Dean Mansel, the most famous of its modern alumni, would have smiled.
Much has undergone change at the hands of Time and of Parliamentary Commissions ; but there still lingers one feature of the old life of the University which elsewhere has passed away. St. John's alone of all the Colleges has (1893) no married Fellow ; thus here, as it can scarcely be elsewhere, the College life is most closely centered within the College walls.
W. H. Hutton, M.A.
For a much fuller notice by the same author see The Colleges of Ox lord by Andrew Clark, M.A., Methuen, Lond., 1891.
COLLEGIUM IoANNIS BaPTI$Ts£.
VIEW BY BEREBLOCK, 1566. [Facsimile from Hearue.]
