The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions: XXI Chapters Contributed by Members of the Colleges
History
The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions: XXI Chapters Contributed by Members of the Colleges
University of Oxford -- History
During this happy period much was done to improve the College, which
can only be touched on in the briefest outline here. In 1662 John Lord
Crewe of Steane (father of Nathaniel) converted the old chapel--which
since the consecration of the new chapel on 15th September, 1631,
had lain empty--into a library, which it still remains, and changed
the library into a set of rooms. In 1662 the room under the library
westwards was set aside as a room where the Fellows might have their
common fires and hold their College meetings;[187] it is still the
Fellows’ morning-room. In 1684 the common-room was wainscotted at a
cost of £90, Dr. John Radcliffe subscribing £10, and George Hickes
and John Kettlewell each £5. In 1686 Fitz-herbert Adams spent £470
on repairing and beautifying the chapel. In 1697-1700 the hall was
wainscotted at a cost of £270, to which Lord Crewe gave £100. Rector
Hutchins bought from Magdalen College some of the houses between the
College and All Saints’ Church, and left money to purchase the others,
so as to form the present College garden.
During this period also the roll of the Fellows received some of its
more famous names. The two eminent non-jurors, George Hickes and John
Kettlewell; the celebrated physician, John Radcliffe; John Potter,
whose Greek scholarship promoted him to the see of Canterbury; and John
Wesley,[188] by and by to win a name only less famous than that of
Wycliffe in the history of religion in England, may be cited.
The long period of prosperity which Lincoln College had enjoyed
during the later part of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the
eighteenth centuries was followed in the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth centuries by a period of decline, during
which the College had its full share in the general stagnation of the
University, and was chiefly notable for the grotesque eccentricities
of its rector, Edward Tatham (Rector 1792-1834). Tatham, an M.A. of
Queen’s College, had been elected into a Yorkshire Fellowship at
Lincoln in 1782. Shortly after his election he came into conflict with
the Rector (John Horner) over a number of points in the interpretation
of the statutes; and after several appeals to the Visitor, was
successful in his contention. In 1790 he distinguished himself by the
ponderous learning, and the vigorous, if coarse, style of his Bampton
Lectures, _The Chart and Scale of Truth by which to find the cause
of Error_ (published in 1790 in two volumes; a copy in the College
library has additional MS. notes by the author). In March 1792 he was
elected Rector, and one of his first achievements was the use he made
of his old practice in controversy over the statutes to obtain from
the Visitor an unstatutable augmentation of the stipend of the Rector.
In the old obits, the Rector, being celebrant, had been assigned
double the allowance of any Fellow; and in elections, according to an
almost universal custom in Oxford Colleges, his vote counted for two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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