Oriel College, Oxford

“ Oriel and its chapel are among the places for religious pilgrimage in Oxford. As Lincoln draws from all parts of the world those who reverence the name of John Wesley, so the Oxford Movement and the Anglican Revival had their starting-point, and for some time their centre, in Oriel. The connection of the College with the Movement was not in either case a mere accident; the Oxford Revival, at any rate, was profoundly influenced by the personality of Newman, and Newman, both by attraction and by repulsion, was largely what Oriel made him. ”

“ But Oxford perhaps may have some interest for you. Our University has not perhaps a very large influence in the world of letters and learning, but it has even now, I think, a good deal to do with the thinkings and doings of our upper classes; and at any rate has a good deal of character of its own.
If you should think it worth while to visit the place it would give me very great pleasure to show it you. I have resided here ten years, and am a Fellow and tutor at Oriel College, so that I may account myself qualified as a cicerone. ”

“ Under Edward II. Exeter College was founded, and linked from the beginning with the west country, by the simultaneous co-foundation of a school, and the rule that all the scholars should thence be drawn. Decent poverty and love of learning were the other qualifications of a scholar. Then followed Oriel, with Edward II. as its founder, the advowson of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin as part of its support, and its name derived from the Hall of La Oriole, which it received early, and soon afterwards occupied. Its library was the first college library ”

“ 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 ”

“ For in the first half of the nineteenth century there was a revival of spirituality, and men followed the lead, not of a Wycliffe, an Erasmus or a Wesley, but of Keble, Pusey and Newman. Oriel College, whose fellowships were confined neither to members of the college nor, in most cases, to candidates from certain places, was the centre whence men like Hurrell Froude, Keble’s pupil, preached their doctrine of reaction ”

“ On this site, in the following February, was laid the foundation stone of the college afterwards incorporated under the title of “The Warden and All Soulen College,” or “The Warden and College of All Faithful Souls deceased at Oxford.” As Adam de Brome had persuaded Edward II. to be the foster-founder of Oriel, so Chichele asked Henry VI. to be the nominal founder of his college. The royal patronage proved advantageous in neither case.{226}
The front quadrangle of All Souls’ remains very much as the founder left it ”

“ The founder was a Cumberland man, and his college attracted a neighbour or a man who spoke with his accent or had the same traditions to become one of the fellows, equal in number with Christ and His apostles. Before and after the beginning of colleges, men from the same district made a small “new Scotland” or “new France” in Oxford streets. Thus the scholars of St. George’s and Oriel were for some time largely Welsh; at Balliol and University College there were many northerners. At all times these divisions were emphasised by conflicts with tongue and arrow and sword. ”

“ He was educated at home, and at the age of fifteen he gained a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and two years afterwards the chancellor's prize for Latin hexameters upon ‘Marius amid the ruins of Carthage.’ His Latin poetry was remarkably good, and a Latin epistle which he addressed to a friend in his seventeenth year will bear comparison with Gray's or Milton's. After proceeding B.A. in 1795 he was invited by the authorities of Oriel to fill a vacant fellowship for which none of the candidates were considered good enough. ”

“ Sewell of New College; Gent. Mag. 1796, ii. 973) . In 1799 he was appointed to the head-mastership of Midhurst free grammar school, and raised the school to great efficiency. From 1807 to 1828 he was headmaster of Rugby school, during which period the school buildings were rebuilt and the number of scholars increased to 380. Many of his pupils were distinguished in after life in parliament and in the church. Claughton (afterwards bishop of St. Albans) and John Frederick Christie, fellow of Oriel College, are picked out as belonging to a ‘very good batch of sixth-form men sent to Oxford by Dr. ”

“ Paul's, was born in Herefordshire, and educated at Oxford, where he became master of arts and doctor of divinity, and was appointed fellow of Oriel College (before 1386) , dean, and afterwards provost (1417-21) . His election as provost was disputed for nearly two years (cf. Tyler, Henry V.) He is thought to have compiled in 1397 a register of the college muniments, which is still extant {Colleges of Oxford, p. 99, ed. Clark) . He supported the archbishop against certain Lollard fellows of the college. ”

“ While the University is thus only a union of the Colleges for attaining such ends and such status as can better be attained by united than by isolated existence, the College is a real and concrete thing, the foundation stone of the ‘Oxford System’. Each College is within itself independent; each has its own traditions and some characteristics of organization, life, and system which are peculiar to itself. With the affairs of the College individually the University is not concerned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For even at home the general uneducated public, taking but a passing interest in educational details, is apt to be hopelessly at sea as to the mutual relation of Colleges and Universities. In the public mind the College probably represents the University: an Oxonian will be sometimes spoken of as 'at College;' University officials are confused with heads of houses, and Collections with University examinations. That foundation which is consecrated to the education of Welsh Oxonians is generally referred to in the remote fastnesses of the Cymru as Oxford College. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 University of London has no colleges directly connected with it, but confers degrees, upon examination, to students of nearly all the institutions of learning in the country. Oxford has twenty-three colleges and Cambridge eighteen. This college system distinguishes the universities of England from those of the continent. A student must connect himself with a college before he becomes a member of the university. The teaching in these colleges is done almost entirely by tutors, and the professors of the university only deliver lectures on special subjects once or twice a week. ”

“ Some of the fellowships are held in connexion with university offices; but the majority are awarded on examination, and are among the highest honours in the university offered by this method. The only undergraduate members of the college are four bible-clerks, [5] so that the college occupies a peculiar position as a society of graduates. The college has its beautiful original front upon High Street; the first quadrangle, practically unaltered since the foundation, is one of the most characteristic in Oxford. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a great difference between a university and a college. A university is great enough to shelter many colleges, and its chancellor is ruler over all. When we reflect that Christ Church College, alone, included as many important buildings as are to be found in some of our modern American universities, we may have some idea of the extent of Oxford University, within whose boundaries twenty such colleges could be counted. ”

“ During this century, too, we find a rival university springing up at Stamford; but, owing to the opposition of Oxford and Cambridge, [Pg 136] it was snuffed out, though there are still standing some interesting buildings which were connected with it. College after college, at both Oxford and Cambridge, has been founded since then; each one has its own special laws and government, which have been altered from time to time, and for many centuries now they have been cities of colleges, unlike anything else in the country. ”

“ There is a rare freedom from ‘’Varsity Politics’. Athletic professionalism is an absent quantity. Oxford neither knows nor understands the spirit of the German student Verbindung or of the American ‘College Fraternity’. In fact many phases of the ‘fraternizing’ spirit seem lacking in Oxford life.
The nearest approach to the ‘Class organization’ or organization by Departments which influences University life in America, is the predominance of the College in Oxford life. Clear lines between ‘Senior’, ‘Junior,’ ‘Sophomore,’ and ‘Freshmen’ are not drawn ”

“ Much time was devoted to the organisation of education in the college and the university. Arrangements were made for inter-collegiate lectures, and Scottish professors were invited to give lectures in the summer term, when their labours in the north were at an end. But his chief object was to lessen the expense of an Oxford career. For this purpose he persuaded the college to found more scholarships and exhibitions, and to establish a hall where, as he hoped, young men would be able to live for little, while enjoying the benefits of the college system. ”

“ If the founders of the earliest Oxford college were indebted for their inspiration to any foreign source, they must have derived it from the great French University in Paris, of which the collegiate system already formed a distinctive feature. Not to speak of still more ancient colleges at Paris, either attached to monasteries or serving the purpose of mere lodging-houses, the Sorbonne, founded about 1250, furnishes a striking precedent for its Oxford successors, as an academical cloister specially planned for the education of the secular clergy. ”

“ The Working Men’s College was largely, perhaps mainly, the product of Oxford and Cambridge, in the sense that most of its founders and first teachers had belonged to one or other of the two Universities, and their object was to impart to others the College spirit as they had felt and known it and realised its value; to give to poor men, to manual workers, something, if it were ever so little, of the atmosphere which had brightened and broadened and sweetened their own lives. The College, accordingly, has always taken Oxford and Cambridge for its models. ”

“ Until the nineteenth century, there really was no university at Oxford, at least in modern times. The colleges were quite independent of one another socially and in athletics, and each of them provided all the necessary instruction for its members. The social clubs which now admit members from the university at large began life as wine clubs of separate colleges, and even to-day the influence of the parent college is apt to predominate. ”