St John's College, Oxford

“ The distinctive feature of the social organization of Oxford life is said to be the colleges. Fifty years ago the remark held good, but to-day it requires an extension. The distinctive feature is the duality of the social organization: a man who enters fully into undergraduate affairs takes part both in the life of the college and in the life of the university. The life of the college, in so far as it is wholesome, is open to all newcomers; it is so organized as to exert powerfully upon them the force of its best influences and traditions, and is thus in the highest degree inclusive. ”

“ John's College, connecting two buildings,—as we stood looking down into the water we almost felt that it, as we did, realized that the visit was one of a lifetime, and not to be hurried over.
How inducive of thought are these old classic grounds, centuries in use? Poets, philosophers, and martyrs, the most renowned men of the world, have here walked as we are walking. Oxford has had her great men, and we bow reverently at the thought or even mention of their names. How the destinies of the kingdom and those of the world have been influenced by men to whom Oxford was alma mater ”

“ John’s College, Oxford, Sir Thomas White, alderman and merchant tailor of London, originally designed the establishment of his college at his birth-place, Reading, in Berkshire. But being warned in a [Pg 97] dream, that he should build a college for the education of youth, in religion and learning, near a place where he should find two elms growing out of the same root, he first proceeded to Cambridge, and finding no such tree, he repaired to Oxford, where he discovered one, which answered the description in his dream, near St. Bernard’s College. ”

“ It is a quiet old College,—not old as age is reckoned in Oxford,—like some great Elizabethan or Jacobean country-house turned into a College, splendid yet homely, possessing that double charm which no palace or castle or cathedral possesses in the same degree,—the charm of stately beauty and the charm of human interest which belongs to the home of generations who have spent there the happiest years of life, preparing for themselves distinction and success, or obscurity and failure. ”

“ It is too bad. We concluded the rambles of the day by visiting the gardens of St. John's College; and I desire, if possible, to say even more in admiration of them than of those of New College,—such beautiful lawns, with tall, ancient trees, and heavy clouds of foliage, and sunny glimpses through archways of leafy branches, where, to-day, we could see parties of girls, making cheerful contrast with the sombre walls and solemn shade. The world, surely, has not another place like Oxford ”

“ 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. ”

“ In college, one freely enjoys all that is fundamental in the life of a young man—a pleasant place to sleep in and to dine in, pleasant fellows with whom to work and to play. In the university, one finds scope for his special capacities in conviviality or in things of 75 the mind. More than any other institution, the English university thus mirrors the conditions of social life in the world at large, in which one is primarily a member of his family, and takes part in the life of the outside community in proportion as his abilities lead him. ”

“ The site of an ancient hospice of St John is occupied by the University Extension College. It was opened in 1892, is affiliated to Oxford University, and has accommodation for 600 students, of both sexes, giving instruction in every main branch of higher university education, agriculture, &c. The grammar school, founded in 1485, occupies modern buildings and ranks among the lesser public schools. ”

“ St John’s College was the last and greatest of the Lady Margaret’s works. When we think [191] of the benefits which she conferred on Oxford and Cambridge, her noble provisions for the theological schools of both Universities, and her two foundations in Cambridge, we can only echo the words of the funeral sermon preached by Fisher in her honour, that the “students of both Universities, to whom she was as a mother ... for her death had cause of weeping.” Very few colleges have so tender an attachment to a founder’s memory as that which St John’s has for Lady Margaret’s ”

“ He had been at Oxford, at St. John's College, about forty years before, when the Archbishop of Canterbury whom the Parliament so barbarously put to death, was his tutor. Of him he had many things to say, of which I will here set down one. "They did him an ill turn that brought him to Court, and put him in the way of preferment and of office in the State. It had been well for him as for the realm also if he had had no higher place than to be president of his college. Learning never had a more duteous son nor the King a worse counsellor." ”

“ John's commemorated the reaction under Philip and Mary, Jesus, by its very name, took its stand as the first Protestant College in Oxford." It was founded in 1571, under a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth, Defender of the Faith, who took all the glory of the foundation, but did very little to help it on to success. The real and active progenitor of the institution was D. Hugh Price, a good Welshman, who wished to be permitted to bestow his estates for the benefit and maintenance of certain scholars of Wales, that "they might be trained up in good letters." ”

“ In an incredibly short time all undergraduate news, and the judgments upon it of those best qualified to judge, ramify the college; and men who seldom stir beyond its walls are brought closely in touch with the innermost spirit of the university life. Here, again, those forbidding walls make possible a freedom of social interplay which is unknown in America. The real union of Oxford, social, athletic, and intellectual, is quite apart from the so-called Oxford Union ”

“ Well, rather, he has got more firsts than any don in Oxford; by which is meant of course that his pupils have got the firsts. A college is rated partly by its number of blues and partly by its number of firsts. For a tutor to lead his pupils to success is as sacred a duty as for an athletic undergraduate to play for the university. The leisurely, not to say loafing, tutor of eighteenth-century tradition has been reformed out of existence. ”

“ The good and bad features of the English college system as a whole should not be hard to distinguish. In all social aspects the colleges are as nearly perfect as human institutions are capable of becoming, and they are the foundation of an unequaled 244 athletic life. Educationally, their qualities are mixed. For the purpose of common or garden English gentlemen, nothing could be better than a happy combination of tutorial instruction and university examining. ”

“ After all, the best college—with all due respect to you, Cartmell, and to you, Martin—has a front quad like a toy castle and a chapel—well, I suppose it's the kind of chapel that particular college ought to have, according to all tradition—a Great Speckled Warning against God. Half the most sensible people in Oxford don't know a jot about the architecture, but they know Oxford. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The subject, usually difficult or impossible to investigate, happened to be on the surface at the time of my residence because of the sensational trial of an Oxford graduate in London. I was satisfied that the general body of undergraduates was quite free of contamination. On the whole, I should say that the restrictions of college life in England are far less dangerous than the absolute freedom of life in an American college. Under our system a few men profit greatly; they leave college experienced in the ways of the world and at the same time thoroughly masters of themselves. ”

“ As a place for the general purposes of residence—eating and sleeping, work and play—the English college is clearly quite as well organized and equipped as any of the societies, clubs, or fraternities of an American university. And whereas these are in their very nature small and exclusive, the college is ample in size and is consciously and effectively inclusive; the very fact of living in it insures a well-ordered life and abundant opportunity for making friends. ”

“ These small colleges possess many 309 of the virtues of the English universities; they train the mind and cultivate it, and at the same time develop the social man. If now the American university were to divide its undergraduate department into organized residential halls, it would combine the advantages of the two types of American institution, which are the two types of instruction the world over. Already our college life at its best is as happy as the college life in England ”

“ The roll of deans contains such names as those of John Owen, the most famous of Puritan preachers, John Fell, theologian and founder of the greatness of the Oxford Press, Henry Aldrich, universally accomplished as scholar, logician, musician, architect, Francis Atterbury, Jacobite and plotter, Cyril Jackson, who ruled Christ Church with a rod of iron, and who ranks first among the creators of nineteenth-century Oxford, Thomas Gaisford and Henry George Liddell, great Greek scholars. It seems that a college gains something by having its head appointed from outside ”

“ William of Waynfleet commanded that Magdalen College should be built over against the oak that fell after six hundred years of life a century ago. Sir Thomas White was “warned in a dream” to build a college at a place where there stood a triple elm tree. Hence arose St. John’s College. Two hundred years ago the tree was known to exist, and there is ground for the pious belief that a scion still flourishes there.
Nowhere is green so wonderful as at Magdalen or Trinity. But their sweetness is no more than the highest expression of the privacy of Oxford. ”

“ John's College, Oxford, in 1610. He matriculated on 26 June 1610, and was chosen fellow in June 1613. He graduated B.A. on 6 June 1614, and M.A. on 9 May 1618; in the latter degree he was incorporated at Cambridge in 1622. In April 1624 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of proctor at Oxford. Afterwards he went to Italy, studied medicine, and took the degree of M.D. at Padua. Returning to England, he was called to the bar of the House of Commons to make a profession of his religion, which he did on 2 April 1628. On 20 June 1628 he was incorporated at Oxford as M.D. of Padua. ”

“ In due course they both entered at Oxford University; John eventually being elected to a Fellowship at Lincoln College, and Charles to a Studentship at Christchurch. In 1725 John was ordained deacon of the Church of England. He left Oxford for a time to act as his father’s curate, Charles remained as Tutor to his college. He, with some of his undergraduate pupils, formed a custom of meeting on certain evenings every week for scripture study and devotion, they carefully observed the Church’s fasts and festivals, and partook of the Holy Communion every Sunday. ”

“ In the sixteenth century, Oxford plays no great part in the actual revolution in the English Church; yet it will be a place attractive to many who cherish the memory of the "Oxford Reformers," the members of Erasmus' circle—John Colet, Thomas More, William Grocyn, and other scholars—who hoped by sound learning to amend the Church without violent change. Some, on the other hand, will see in the sixteenth-century Oxford, the school which trained men for the Counter-Reformation, such as the heroic Jesuit, Campion, or Cardinal Alien, the founder of the English College at Douai. ”

“ Among the fellows at this time were Richard Neile,* and Thomas Morton,* who, as Archbishop of York and Bishop of Durham, were great benefactors to the college. And, with the reign of James I., the college began to distinguish itself, like St John the Baptist’s College at Oxford, as a Royalist institution. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford,* the great Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland,* the blameless hero of the Cavalier party, are the celebrities of the first half of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow Universities were established and fostered by the church to educate more fully the clergy. The founders of Harvard College thus described their motive: "Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our ministers shall lie in the dust." Yale College was founded by preachers for a like purpose. Princeton College was founded "toPage 250 supply the church with learned and able preachers of the Word." The fact is that prior to the eighteenth century there was no university founded save those established for the glory of God and the good of the church. ”

“ There are three private halls in Oxford, established under a university statute of 1882, which provides for such establishment by any member of convocation under certain conditions and under licence from the vice-chancellor. Non-collegiate students, [13] i.e. members of the university, possessing all its privileges without being members of any college, were first admitted in 1868. As a body they are under the care of a delegacy and the supervision of a censor. Women are admitted to lectures and university examinations but not to its degrees ”