Worcester College, Oxford

“ Education
Rivers and Worcester were not the only men of their day with literary tastes. The colleges at Oxford and Cambridge numbered among their alumni laymen as well as churchmen. The three great public schools of England already existed. The grammar school of Westminster, afterwards to become St. Peter's College under Queen Elizabeth, had a continuous existence from the time of Edward I. Winchester College had been founded by William of Wykeham. Eton College was a foundation due to Henry of Windsor. ”

“ Dr. Parkin and Mr. Wylie, as officially connected with the Rhodes Trust, have given [vi] us access to Memoranda, and have given information on many points connected with the Scholarship System. Mr. Gerrans, Fellow of Worcester College, has explained and furnished information on many difficult points in the Oxford system, and has otherwise considerably simplified the problem of arrangement and publication. Our thanks are due also to Mr. L. Cecil Jane of University College for very helpful suggestions. For whatever errors or shortcomings may be discovered we alone are responsible. ”

“ To Pembroke College, founded 1624, by King James I., his Queen, Anne, attached a Canonry of Gloucester to the Mastership.
To Worcester, founded 1714, Mrs. Sarah Eaton was a benefactor.
It may be that the result of there being fewer female benefactors in Oxford than in Cambridge may have affected the comparative want of gratitude to women in this city. Whatever be the cause, the oldest University is the hardest to move.
Oxford Lectures for the benefit of women were started as early as 1865, but not in connection with the University. ”

“ He was educated at the King's School, Worcester, under Henry Bright (d. 1626) , one of the most celebrated schoolmasters of the day. In 1624 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner. Finding himself under 'a careless tutor,' he removed to the newly founded Pembroke College as a pupil of Thomas Lushington [q. v.] ”

“ Worcester is comparatively at some distance from the other Colleges, a fact on which undergraduate humour loves to dwell; but jests on this subject reflect rather on the poor walking powers of those who make them. At any rate, a "well-girt" visitor to Oxford need not hesitate to take the journey, and will certainly find his pains rewarded, for Worcester has much to show that is of interest, and much that is beautiful.
The first view gives the interior of the Front Quadrangle. The buildings here are stately and dignified, if a little cold ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Upon its foundation the chief aim was announced to be the development of instruction in the methods of scientific research. The influence of this institution upon the development of higher education in the United States has been incalculably great. Johns Hopkins was not a transplanted German university. The unique place of the college in American education was shown by the fact that graduate schools have followed the lead of Johns Hopkins in building upon the college. Even Clark University at Worcester, founded in 1889 upon a purely graduate basis, established an undergraduate college in 1902. ”

“ Worcester Polytechnic Institute (founded in 1865 by John Boynton of Templeton, Massachusetts; opened in 1868) is one of the best-equipped technical schools of college rank in the country; in 1910 it had 49 instructors, 515 students and a library of 12,700 vols.; the buildings are near Institute Park. On Packachoag Hill or Mt. St James (690 ft.) is the Jesuit college of the Holy Cross, with a preparatory school, founded in 1843 by Benedict J. Fenwick, bishop of Boston, and chartered in 1865; in 1910 it had 30 instructors and 450 students. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Oxford, indeed, is a paradise for the student of Art. Nowhere, except at Cambridge, can the series of architectural works be paralleled, and at both universities the charm of their ancient buildings is enhanced by their beautiful setting in college gardens.
It is not an accident that in the old universities more than anywhere else, so much of beauty has survived, nor is it to be put down as a happy piece of academic conservatism. It is rather the natural result of their constitution and endowment. What has been so fatal to the beauty of old England elsewhere has been material prosperity. ”

“ The names of New College men famous for learning or for political success, during the last half-century, are too recent to mention, but it is fitting to put on record that to New College belongs the sad distinction of having the longest Roll of Honour in the late War. It has lost about 250 of its sons, including four of the most distinguished young tutors in Oxford; History and Philosophy, Scholarship and Natural Science are all of them the poorer for the premature loss of Cheesman and Heath, Hunter and Geoffrey Smith ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whitefield himself shall describe its proceedings. "Went this morning to see and preach at Cambridge, the chief college for training up the sons of the prophets in all New England. It has one president, I think four tutors, and about a hundred students. It is scarce as big as one of our least colleges in Oxford, and as far as I could gather from some who well knew the state of it, not far superior to our universities in piety and true godliness. Tutors neglect to pray with, and examine the hearts of their pupils. Discipline is at too low an ebb. Bad books are become fashionable. ”

“ In theory, "hall" and "college" have much in common; one Cambridge college indeed has retained the name of "hall," and two of the women's colleges in Oxford have preferred to keep the old style. In practice, their difference lies in the two facts that colleges are wealthier, with more endowments, and that they are self-governing, with Fellows who co-opt to vacancies in their own body and elect their head. St. Edmund Hall has its head appointed by the fellows of Queen's, with which institution it has long been connected. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ On 13 April 1635 he was instituted rector of Whitchurch in Warwickshire, and he was clerk for the diocese of Worcester in both convocations of the clergy held in 1640. In 1646 he was appointed by the city of Worcester to treat with the parliamentary army respecting the surrender of the place. Afterwards he fled to the king at Oxford, when he was deprived of his church preferment. Later he removed to London, where he acted as almoner and confessor to royalist sufferers. ”

“ The old days of neglect are past, the days reflected in the scandalous story—told of more than one college—about the old fellow who was missing for two months, and, after being searched for high and low, was found hanging dead in the college library. Now the libraries everywhere are being used continually, and men can realize in them, perhaps better than anywhere else, how great the past of Oxford has been, and can form some idea of the labours of forgotten generations, which have made the University what it was and what it is. ”

“ Effect of these reforms
Other salutary changes naturally grew out of this comprehensive reform, and far greater progress was made by the University during the thirty years immediately following it than in any previous century of its history. The impulse given to education reacted upon learning and research; Oxford science began once more to command the respect of Europe; the professoriate received an accession of illustrious names; and college tuition, instead of being the mere temporary vocation of fellows waiting for livings, gradually placed itself on the footing of a regular profession. ”