It was from this neighbourhood that some Oxford scholars migrated to
Stamford in 1334, in order to escape one of the many Town and Gown
rows, which rendered Mediaeval Oxford anything but a place of quiet
academic study. They seem to have carried with them the emblem of
their hall, a fine sanctuary knocker of brass, representing a lion's
head, with a ring through its nose; this knocker was installed at a
house in Stamford, which still retains the name it gave, "Brasenose
Hall." The knocker itself was there till 1890, when the College
recovered the relic (it now hangs in the hall). The students were
compelled by threats of excommunication to return to their old
university, and down to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Oxford men, when admitted to the degree of M.A., were compelled to
swear "not to lecture at Stamford."
The old "King's Hall," which bore the name of "Brasenose," was
transformed into a college in 1511 by the munificence of our first
lay founder, Sir Richard Sutton; he shared his benevolence, however,
with Bishop Smith, of Lincoln. The College celebrated, in 1911, its
quatercentenary in an appropriate way, by publishing its register in
full, with a group of most interesting monographs on various aspects
of the College history.
The buildings are a good example of the typical Oxford college; the
Front Quad, shown in our picture, belongs to the time of the
Founders, but the picturesque third story of dormer windows, which
give it a special charm, dates from the reign of James I, when all
colleges were rapidly increasing their numbers and their
accommodation. Of the rest of the buildings of Brasenose, the chapel
deserves special notice, for it was the last effort of the Gothic
style in Oxford, and it was actually finished in the days of
Cromwell, not a period likely to be favourable to the erection of new
college chapels.
Brasenose (or B.N.C., as it is universally called) has produced a
prime minister of England in Henry Addington, whom the college record
kindly describes as "not the most distinguished" statesman who has
held that position: but a much better known worthy is John Foxe, the
Martyrologist, whose chained works used to add a grim charm of horror
to so many parish churches in England; the experiences of the young
Macaulay, at Cheddar, are an example which could be paralleled by
those of countless young readers of Foxe, who, however, did not
become great historians and are forgotten. Somewhat junior to Foxe,
at B.N.C., was Robert Burton, the author of the /Anatomy of
Melancholy/, who found both his lifework as a parish vicar, and his
burial-place in Oxford.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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