Oxford and Her Colleges: A View from the Radcliffe LibrarySmith, Goldwin
History
Oxford and Her Colleges: A View from the Radcliffe Library
Smith, Goldwin
University of Oxford
Fatal bequests of the religious war were the religious tests. Leicester,
as Chancellor, introduced subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles to
keep out Romanists; King James, that to the three articles of the
Thirty-sixth Canon to keep out Puritans. These tests, involving scores
of controverted propositions in theology, were imposed on the
consciences of mere boys. The Universities were thus taken from the
nation and given to the State Church, which, in the course of time, as
dissent from its doctrines gained ground, came to be far from identical
with the nation.
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[Illustration: ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE--GARDEN FRONT.]
In the first lull, however, new Colleges arose, partly out of the ruins
of the monastic houses of the past. Trinity College, of which the quiet
old quadrangle is curiously mated with a fantastic Chapel of much later
date, was founded out of the ruin of Durham College, a Benedictine
House. Its Founder, Sir Thomas Pope, was one of that group of highly
educated lay statesmen, eminent both in the councils of kings and among
the patrons of learning, which succeeded the great Prelates of the
Middle Ages. He was a Catholic, as his statutes show; but a liberal
Catholic, not unfriendly to light, though little knowing perhaps whither
it would lead him. Among his friends was Sir Nicholas Bacon, who
bequeathed to him the splendid whistle, then used to call servants,
which is seen round his neck in his portrait. Another of his friends was
Pole, who showed his intellectual liberality by recommending him to
enjoin in his statutes the study of Greek. St. John's College, again,
rose out of the wreck of a Bernardine House. The Founder was not a
statesman or a prelate, but a great citizen, Sir Thomas White, sometime
Lord Mayor of London, who had amassed wealth in trade, and made a noble
use of it. White also was of the olden faith. That the storm was not
over when his College was founded is tragically shown by the fate of
Campion, who, when White was laid in the College Chapel, preached the
funeral sermon, and afterwards becoming a Jesuit and an emissary of
his Order, was brought to the rack and to the scaffold. There was also a
great secession of Fellows when the final rupture took place between
Rome and Elizabeth. In the group of cultivated Knights and statesmen,
who patronised learning and education, may be placed Sir William Petre,
the second Founder of Exeter College, whose monument is its old
quadrangle, and Sir Thomas Bodley, whose monument is the Bodleian
Library. If Petre and Bodley were Protestants, while Pope and White were
Catholics, the difference was rather political than religious. In
religion the public men changed with the national government, little
sharing the passions of either theological party.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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