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
In 1666 pressure was put upon Maynard to resign, and he did so
on advice of the Visitor and his brother, Sir John Maynard. The
resignation was made smooth for him by the understanding that he
should be appointed Prebendary of Exeter in room of Dr. Arthur Bury,
who was now elected Rector of Exeter. Dr. Bury wrote a book, famous
in the Deist controversy, called _The Naked Gospel_, which had the
distinction of being impeached by several Masters of Arts, and formally
condemned and burnt by order of the Convocation of the University.
About the time of its publication, Bury got into trouble with Trelawney
the Visitor, the same whose name became a watchword in the West (“and
shall Trelawney die”), over questions of discipline and jurisdiction.
The Visitor expelled Bury and his supporters, July 1690; the decision
was appealed against in the Court of King’s Bench, and in the House of
Lords, but was finally upheld.
The evil effects of the Restoration in studies and in morals continued.
Later on, Dean Prideaux can still say, “There is nothing but drinking
and duncery. Exeter is totally spoiled, and so is Christ Church. There
is over against Baliol, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for
none but dragooners and tinkers. Here the Baliol men, by perpetual
bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect
sots.”
Exeter and Christ Church were both reformed by John Conybeare,[127]
a writer famous for his answer to the _Christianity as old as the
Creation_ of Matthew Tindal, also an Exeter man.
Jacobite feeling was strong in Oxford, and at the election of county
members in 1755, when the Jacobites guarded the hustings in Broad
Street, twenty men deep, the Whigs passed through Exeter and succeeded
in voting. The Vice-Chancellor, a strong Jacobite, remarked on “the
infamous behaviour of one College”; and this led to a war of pamphlets.
Christ Church, Exeter, Merton, and Wadham were the four Whig Colleges.
Early in the eighteenth century the front gate and tower and the
buildings between this and the Hall were erected by the help of
such friends as Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, formerly a
Fellow. But in 1709 the library was burnt. The fire began “in the
scrape-trencher’s room. This adjoining to the library, all the inner
part of the library was destroyed, and only one stall of books or
thereabouts secured.” The wind was west, and the smoke must have
reached the nostrils of Hearne as he lay abed at St. Edmund Hall, for
“he was strangely disturbed with apprehensions of fire.” The library
was rebuilt in 1778, and had many gifts of books and manuscripts, and a
fund for buying more was established by Dr. Hugh Shortridge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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