Gresham College

“ It is impossible not to regret the fine old College, with its spacious courtyard and physic garden and its historic associations. But it would seem as if no purely educational establishment81 can flourish in the City of London. The Royal Society, the College of Physicians, and the College of Surgeons have all moved away, and Gresham College alone is left, as if to show the impossibility of flourishing in the richest city of the day. ”

“ John Bull, was the first to hold anything like a University Professorship in London—or indeed in England. It is true Gresham College has not developed into a University, but its founder, Sir Thomas Gresham, certainly seems to have had such an end in view, and John Bull was the first Gresham Music Lecturer. ”

“ The Corporation and the Mercers’ Company were the trustees of this fund. There were seven endowed professorships—viz., astronomy, physic, law, geometry, divinity, rhetoric, and music. Gresham’s house in Bishopsgate Street appears to have been admirably adapted for a college. It was105 quadrangular, and had a garden and planted walks, so that the quiet and seclusion which are essential to study might have been obtained there. Be the cause what it may, the College, which escaped the fire, did not flourish. ”

“ Gresham College was subsequently converted into the modern general excise-office; but the places are still continued, with a double salary for the loss of apartments, and the lectures are delivered gratuitously twice a day in a small room in the Royal Exchange, during term-time. The will of the founder has not, however, been actually carried into execution. As we hate “solemn farce” and “ignorance in stilts,” we hope “scrutiny will not be stone blind” in this matter. ”

“ At a meeting held in Gresham College, twelve [Pg 110] persons of eminence in science and in other ways "formed the design," as the first Journal Book of the Royal Society records, "of founding a College for the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning." ”

“ We do not allow our fellows to marry, because we consider academical institutions as preparatory to a settlement in the world. It is only by being employed as a tutor, that a fellow can obtain any thing more than a livelihood. To be sure a man, who has enough without teaching, will probably not teach; for we would all be idle if we could [41] . In the same manner, a man who is to get nothing by teaching, will not exert himself. Gresham-College was intended as a place of instruction for London ”

“ In a word, an academical education is so much wanted in London, that everybody of ability and figure will readily come into it; and I dare engage, the place need but be chosen, and tutors approved of, to complete the design at once.
It may be objected, that there is a kind of university at Gresham college, where professors in all sciences are maintained, and obliged to read lectures every day, or at least as often as demanded. The design is most laudable, but it smells too much of the sine cure ”

“ He was admitted on 13 May 1647 a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where, after taking his first degree in arts, he was elected to a fellowship. In 1659 he was chosen professor of rhetoric in Gresham College, London, and while holding that office he zealously promoted the institution of the Royal Society, the members of which assembled there. ”

“ It is known, however, that many chronicles and historical MSS. of great value formed part of the donation to the College of Arms; and it would appear from a document in the handwriting of Sir William Dugdale, referred to by Sir Charles Young, that many monastic registers and cartularies which were taken to Gresham College, had nevertheless been intended by the Duke for the College over which, as Earl Marshal, he presided. ”

“ On his father's death in January 1659–60 he inherited an ample fortune, and that he might study with less interruption, he hired chambers in Gresham College, where he had frequent opportunities of conversing with learned men. ”

“ Of the two little companies of inquirers whom we have already noticed as gathering at the close of the Civil War, that which remained in the capital and had at last been broken up by the troubles of the Second Protectorate was revived at the Restoration by the return to London of the more eminent members of the group which had assembled at Oxford. But the little company of philosophers had hardly begun their meetings at Gresham College when they found themselves objects of a general interest. Science suddenly became the fashion of the day. ”

“ The Excise office was afterwards removed to the mansion of Sir J. Frederick, in Ironmonger Lane, and remained there until 1768, when the trustees of the Gresham estates let the ground on which Gresham College and Almshouses stood, extending from Bishopsgate Street to Broad Street, to Government for £500 per annum, the City and Mercers' Company further agreeing to pay out of the Gresham funds the sum of £1,800 towards [161] the demolition of the college and the building of the Excise Office. ”

“ The rents of the Royal Exchange were, with Gresham House, to be vested in the hands of the corporation of London and of the Mercers' Company, who were to appoint seven lecturers. The lecturers' salaries were fixed at 50l. per annum, and they were to lecture successively on the sciences of divinity, astronomy, geometry, music, law, medicine, and rhetoric. The professors were required to be unmarried men, and each was to be provided with a separate suite of apartments. The college did not prove very successful. Lady Gresham sought to divert its endowment after Gresham's death. ”

“ It is connected with the bishopric of Durham, the office of warden being annexed to the deanery of Durham, and a canonry in the cathedral being annexed to each of the professors of divinity and classical literature. There are also professors of mathematics, Hebrew, medicine, &c. The students mostly reside within the university buildings, but in 1870 a regulation was passed dispensing with the necessity of residing in any college, hall, or house connected with the university in order to be admitted as a member. ”

“ The B.A. degree is given after examination in the usual subjects, and may be a pass or honours degree; the M.A., as at Oxford and Cambridge, is gained by the payment of a fee after a certain time has elapsed. There are also a law school, a medical school, and a school of engineering, and degrees are granted in these subjects, as well as in arts and divinity. The college possesses a library of about 285,000 printed volumes and 1700 manuscripts. It has also a botanic garden and museum. In 1613 James I granted to the university the right of returning two members to Parliament. ”

“ The academical year is divided into three terms—Michaelmas, Epiphany, and Easter. For the degree of B.A., or a licence in theology, a residence of two years (of six months each) is necessary. The M.A. degree may be obtained by a graduate who is of the standing of nine terms since taking his degree of B.A. Armstrong College, founded in 1874, and the College of Medicine, both at Newcastle-on-Tyne, form part of the University of Durham. ”

“ GRESHAM MUSICAL PROFESSORSHIP. In the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder of the college bearing his name in the city of London, provision was made for several professorships, and for the 'sallarie' of a person 'mete to rede the lecture of musicke' in the college. ”

“ In the following year he becomes Bachelor of Music of Oxford, three years later Doctor of Music of both Oxford and Cambridge. When, in 1596, Sir Thomas Gresham founded his College in London, he was made Professor in Music, and that without (as the statute demanded) lecturing in Latin. But he held this post no more than five years. We find him, “on grounds of health,” travelling in foreign countries. His playing created the greatest enthusiasm. The French, the Spanish, and the Austrian courts were in a furore. Like all later executants, he is the subject of myths. ”

“ More down to the latest dates, may challenge comparison with them. The City and its halls are full of them; and Sir Thomas Gresham’s design of an university in London could not be better revived and realized than by annexing a fine gallery of merchants’ portraits to its other branches of instruction. It is a good suggestion, that the profit got by the Treasury from the sale of his estate in Broad Street to a Banking Company, should be pursued to its legitimate issue,—the establishment of that university.
The topic of Gresham’s University has some elucidation from the list of 1677. ”

“ For generation after generation, Adamses and Brookses and Boylstons and Gorhams had gone to Harvard College, and although none of them, as far as known, had ever done any good there, or thought himself the better for it, custom, social ties, convenience, and, above all, economy, kept each generation in the track. Any other education would have required a serious effort, but no one took Harvard College seriously. All went there because their friends went there, and the College was their ideal of social self-respect.
Harvard College, as far as it educated at all, was a mild and liberal school, which sent young men into the world with all they needed to make respectable citizens, and something of what they wanted to make useful ones. ”

“ Statutes were not granted to the masters admitted to the benefits of this foundation until the year 1280, and by that time a precedent had been created. From the year 1280, then, may be dated the incorporation of what is now known as University College. A very small society of poor masters were, according to the revised plan, to live together on the bounty of William of Durham and devote themselves to the study of theology. ”

“ But the truth of it is there are too many old women at the head of the Universities. What you want are keen-headed men, men of experience in the world, who would move with the times, and get Oxford and Cambridge to move with them. I am so convinced I am right in this opinion, that if it were not for the cares of business, to which I must return when I have finished with Cambridge, I should apply for a Trinity fellowship after I have taken my degree, and try to infuse a little spirit into the counsels of the college and through it into the University. ”

“ Newnham at first prepared its students for the Higher Local examinations and the triposes, discountenanced the Previous Examination and would not allow its students to prepare for the Ordinary degree. In the event, Newnham has had to abandon the examination which was the original raison d’être of its existence, and Girton has had virtually to abandon its claim to examination for the ordinary degree. This means that every woman who takes a degree takes it in honours: the same is true of no college of men in Cambridge except King’s. ”

“ From the thirteenth century foundations increase in number, both at Oxford and Cambridge. Now "chests" are created, a kind of pawnbroking institution for the benefit of scholars; now a college is created like University College, the most ancient of all, founded by William of Durham, who died in 1249, or New College, established by the illustrious Chancellor of Edward III. William of Wykeham. Sometimes books are bequeathed, as by Richard de Bury and Thomas de Cobham in the fourteenth century, [Pg 176] or by Humphrey of Gloucester, in the fifteenth. ”

“ I trust that, at least, I shall have brought home to many the conviction that Newnham College is unique, in the character and motives of its first founders, in the steady devotion to its best interests of successive governors, teachers and students, as also in its relations—complicated, but near, we may hope, to a solution—with the University under the protecting shadow of which it has grown to prosperity. ”

“ Such ambitions need not be in conflict, but should be in harmony, the influence of the college being strengthened through its graduates. Such a gathering together of educational forces will, I would fain believe, raise this University to a far higher sphere of usefulness than that which it now occupies—confer on it uniqueness and individuality, and tend to give to the Professors of its colleges University rank. It needs the friction of mind against mind to kindle the heat which generates thought ”

“ I quote the later portion: "One appeal I should like to make to those whom we still regard as our friends, though for the moment they are opposed to us. It is that they may not be led to think that a separate University for women can be the true solution of the difficulty.
"Can we imagine what the position of such an institution would really be? If it were merely a body for conferring degrees without holding examinations, its degrees must be given alike on the [103] examinations of Cambridge, Oxford, and Durham; all the other Universities having opened their degrees. ”

“ Nothing confers more honor on the State where it is established, or more utility on the country at large. A respectable university is an establishment which must be the work of time. If pecuniary means were not wanting, no new institution could possess character and respectability at once. We owe deep obligation to our ancestors, who began, almost on the moment of their arrival, the work of building up this institution.
Although established in a different government, the Colony of Plymouth manifested warm friendship for Harvard College. ”