Exeter College, Oxford

“ Inspired by the example of Merton and a similar dislike of{125} monks 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. ”

“ HIS GRACE OF WELLINGTON Is a living example of the fact, that it does not require great learning to make a great general; nor is great learning always necessary to complete the character of the head of a college. The late Rector of Exeter College, Dr. Cole, raised that society, by his prudent management, from the very reduced rank in which he found it amongst the other foundations of Oxford, to a flourishing and high reputation for good scholarship. ”

“ The western College was founded in 1314 by Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, who twelve years later met his death as a supporter of Edward II., when that king was overthrown and murdered. A later and liberal patron was Sir William Petre, father of Dorothy Wadham, a statesman of the Tudor period. Of the ancient buildings of Exeter hardly anything remains. The Hall dates from the seventeenth century, the fronts to the Turl and Broad Streets from the nineteenth. The present Chapel is the third in which Exeter men have worshipped. ”

“ He became a servitor of Exeter College, Oxford, on 5 April 1639, and graduated B.A. on 29 Nov. 1642. He became in 1652 vicar of St. Lawrence Clyst, near Exeter, and, being a staunch churchman and royalist, he lay under a long sequestration during the troubles, upholding the interests of the king and the church by constant preaching and writing (Letter from Lamplugh, bishop of Exeter, to Sancroft, 16 April 1634, Tanner MSS. in Bodl. Libr. xxxii. f. 30) . At the Restoration he was created B.D. of Oxford, by royal mandate, on 20 Sept. 1660, and prebendary of Exeter Cathedral on 18 Jan. ”

“ Himself a learned man, he was a great patron of learning, and took such interest in the hall which his predecessor, Bishop Stapeldon, had founded in Oxford, that he was regarded as its second founder; at any rate, he was its generous benefactor, and its name was changed from Stapeldon Hall to Exeter College in his day. ”

“ He taught at New College till 1489, when he was summoned to Paris by Charles VIII, who appointed him, with Publius Faustus Andrelinus, to teach there; but, owing to the jealousy of the logicians, he seems to have returned to Oxford, and perhaps lodged in Exeter College in 1491. ”

“ On 29 March 1592 he was admitted a full fellow of Exeter College, and was in the same year elected rector by the influence of Queen Elizabeth, who depended on him to bring the college, where there were many Romanists, into strict conformity with the established church. During the queen's visit to Oxford, 22–8 Sept. 1592, he was the respondent in a disputation on divinity, and is specially mentioned amongst the doctors ordered to provide themselves with scarlet gowns and hoods for the credit of the university. He was again respondent in a disputation held before James I in 1605. ”

“ In February 1571-2 he was granted the degree of B.A. at Oxford by virtue of his residence at Cambridge, and a month later proceeded M.A. in the same university after obtaining a dispensation which relieved him of the necessity of residence (Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc.ii.ii. 1, 79, 368, iii. 14) . Wood says that he was a member first of Christ Church or Broadgates Hall, Oxford, and afterwards of Exeter College. The university register does not mention his connection with any college. ”

“ In 1796 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, but did not graduate, and on 19 Nov. 1803 matriculated at Oxford as a gentleman commoner of Exeter College, chiefly in order to study at the Bodleian and other libraries. ”

“ In 1829 I was entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and went through the usual course of lectures with fair success. As a family we have all favoured Oxford rather than Cambridge: my father and two cousins, Elisha and Carré, were at Exeter College, to take the benefit of its Sarnian Exhibitions ”

“ Becoming commoner of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, he matriculated 14 Oct. 1597. Before taking his degree he moved to Exeter College, ‘where, by the benefit of a diligent tutor, he became a smart disputant.’ He graduated B.A. 10 July 1601, and M.A. 22 May 1604. ”

“ None of these houses is a residence for undergraduates. There is a theological college at Cuddesdon, near Oxford, where also is the bishop of Oxford’s palace.
A notable group of buildings connected with the university stands between Broad Street and High Street, and between Exeter and Brasenose and All Souls colleges. Among these the principal are the old schools buildings, which form a fine quadrangle, and are now mainly occupied by the Bodleian University buildings and institutions.Library, more extensive accommodation for the schools (examinations, &c.) ”

“ With this career in view, Oxford would naturally succeed to Marlborough, and at Oxford the natural college for a Marlborough boy to go to was Exeter. There was a strong connexion between the West-country school and the West-country college; and several of the Marlborough masters were Exeter men. But Morris was not high up in school, and was more of an expert in silkworms' eggs and old churches than in exact scholarship, while the condition of the school in the last year of Dr. ”

“ EPHESVS BACKSLIDING | CONSIDE-|RED AND APPLY-|ED TO THESE | times, in a Sermon preached at | Oxford, in St Maries, the | tenth of Iuly, being the Act | Sunday. 1614. | BY | Iohn Prideaux, 99Doctor of Divinity, | and Rector of Exceter College. | [motto, then device.]
Impr. 7: 1614: sm. 4o: pp. [8] + 37 + [3] : p. 11 beg. worthie comming: English Roman. Contents:—p. (1) title: (3–6) dedication to dr. Bodley, “canon of Exeter, and parson of Shobrooke in Devon,” dated “from Exceter College in Oxford, August 5.”, 1614: 1–37, the sermon, on Rev. ii. 4.
For the author see Wood’s Ath. Oxon., iii. ”

“ In these few lines we gladly hail one of those just and sensible reforms in which Exeter does not now for the first time take the lead,—which are overlooked because they are so simple in themselves, and so plainly within the reach of every college, but which, when once seen in action, cannot fail to be generally adopted. ”

“ In view of these and other dangers—amongst which the proselytism of the monks and friars must have seemed to many parents the most formidable of all—the colleges of Merton, Balliol, and University, followed in the fourteenth century by Queen's, Oriel, and Exeter, were founded not so much to bring education at Oxford within the reach of the poor as to make the conditions of university life more safe, more tolerable, and more refined. ”

“ If Oxford thus, to some extent, moulded to her pattern men who, welcome as they were, were only accidental, surely the college spirit may be trusted to assimilate whatever material the changed conditions of social or of political life furnish to it. The hope of many at Oxford is that there will be a great development and a great change. On one side it will be good if Oxford becomes to a much greater extent not only an all-British, but also a world university; on another side it is to be hoped that far more than ever before men of all classes in England will come to Oxford. ”

“ The ordinary English man or woman, unconnected with Oxford, has never heard of them. The undergraduate and the ordinary don has seen some part just now and then, when some enthusiastic guests have had to be taken round the sights.
And yet a book of many volumes might be written to tell of the things both rare and exquisite that Oxford hugs most close to her breast. He who cares to look may find them everywhere. There is not a college in all the University that does not possess something precious, either for its intrinsic beauty or for its historical interest. ”

“ It is like a great family mansion, which owner after owner has enlarged or improved to meet his own needs or tastes, and which, thus chronicling successive phases of social and domestic life, is wanting in uniformity but not in living interest or beauty.
Oxford is a federation of Colleges. It had been strictly so for two centuries, and every student had been required to be a member of a college when, in 1856, non-collegiate students, of whom there are now a good many, were admitted. The University is the federal government. ”

“ We shall have considered Oxford to very little purpose, if it is not plain that the University has been less a home of learning, on the whole, than a microcosm of English intellectual life. At Oxford the men have been thinking what England was to think a few months later, and they have been thinking with the passion and the energy of youth. The impulse to thought has not, perhaps, very often been given by any mind or minds within the college walls; it has come from without—from Italy, from France, from London, from a country vicarage, perhaps, from the voice of a wandering preacher. ”

“ The number of students and of residents, the dignity of the authorities, the value of the foundations, the history and the architecture, the known sympathy of entire Britain in what is done there, justify a dedication to study in the undergraduate, such as cannot easily be in America, where his college is half suspected by the Freshman to be insignificant in the scale beside trade and politics. Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates in the realm ”

“ As a teaching institution Oxford is expensive, but (on the whole) efficient. It is expensive because it sacrifices the teacher to the taught, and leads the former to bestow upon the latter a great deal of individual attention, more, possibly, than is good for him, more, certainly, than is necessary or than he gets elsewhere. It is efficient because the college spirit is strong, and the competition between the colleges is keen. ”

“ It had at length become possible again for [Pg 182] a man to keep his terms and take his degree without continual residence within college walls. The numbers of the University grew rapidly, and at a time when more efficient tutors and discipline made Oxford attractive to many who were neither frivolous nor rich. Oxford became, in fact, a place of education. The previous century had been conspicuous for great names and lack of system; what was achieved was due to individual endowment and energy; and the able men stood somewhat apart from their contemporaries. ”

“ In this great foundation then the three characteristic features of a college are found—a common life, powers of self-government, with the right of choosing future members, and endowments that enable religion and learning to flourish, free from more pressing cares. It is these features which distinguish the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and which have determined their history. ”

“ But no one who has been brought intimately in contact with the Oxford life can fail to realize its charm. The influence on a few American students scattered over the whole country will surely be of advantage to them and to our relations with Great Britain. The American university presidents who have been given control of the administration of the Rhodes scholarships have decided to require residence at an American college before the student proceeds to Oxford. ”

“ Here is the first misconception of all strangers. And this feature of Oxford it is which has drawn such exclamations of astonishment from foreigners. Lipsius, for example, protested with fervor, on first seeing this vast establishment of Oxford, that one college of this university was greater in its power and splendor, that it glorified and illustrated the honors of literature more conspicuously by the pomps with which it invested the ministers and machinery of education, than any entire university of the continent.
What is a university almost everywhere else? ”

“ It has been a feature of the history of Oxford that every college has, from time to time, come to the front as the special home and source of some movement. There has never been the overshadowing concentration of men and of wealth, which has given a more one-sided direction to the history of Cambridge. Hence the strength of the college system; every college has its traditions to live up to, its great names to cherish, and Wadham is, certainly, by no means last or least in these respects. ”

“ Oxford has now 21 colleges, among which are Balliol, Christ Church, Magdalen, Oriel, Trinity, and University College; 64 professors and teachers, and 3000 students. It is rich in museums and libraries; the Bodleian Library is of great value, the Taylor Library is devoted to modern literature. The Oxford or Tractarian Movement, one of the most remarkable religious impulses of modern times, had its centre in the University between 1834 and 1845. Among distinguished Oxford alumni were Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, Newman ”

“ But Christ Church is not the only unique college in Oxford. As there is no other to be found in any university so curiously combined with the cathedral and ecclesiastical dignitaries of a see, so is there no other, in this country at all events, that has preserved its original intention, as a college for Fellows only, as has All Souls. Here no noisy undergraduate is allowed to disturb the calm. ”

“ The broad-minded founder accepted this view. He drew up statutes, by means of which he hoped to train men who should help the Church to recognise, to lead and to control the New Movement. The verdict of his contemporaries with regard to his work and intentions is expressed by Erasmus, who wrote that “Just as Rhodes was once famous for the Colossus, and Caria for the tomb of Mausolus, so the new College at Oxford dedicated to the most profitable literature would be recognised throughout the civilised world as one of the chief ornaments of Britain.” ”