37i
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE.
372
CROZIER PRESENTED BY THE FOUNDER, circa 1517. —
From Lascelles.
1598, all three Devonshire Scholars, of whom Fuller says, "No one county in England bare three such men (contemporary at large) in what College soever they were bred, no College in England bred such three men, in what county soever they were born ; " Thomas Jackson, President in 1630, and Dean of Peterborough, perhaps the most eminent theologian of his time ; the " ever-memorable " John Hales; the antiquaries, Miles Windsor, Brian Twyne and William Fulman ; Edward Pocock, the famous Oriental scholar ; General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia ; the great lawyers, Lord Stowell and Lord Tenterden ; Arch- bishop Laurence and Bishops Burgess, Copleston and Phillpotts ; William Buckland, Dean of Westminster, the father of English geologists ; John Keble and Thomas Arnold. The name of the unhappy Duke of Monmouth, reputed natural son of Charles II., occurs in the Buttery Books from 1666 to 1683, but he does not appear ever to have "batteled."
The charming account of Corpus, its studies, and its youthful society, contributed by Mr. Justice Coleridge in a letter to Dr. Stanley, for his " Life of Arnold, " gives an attractive picture of student life at
Corpus in the early years of the present century :
"Arnold and I, as you know, were undergraduates
of Corpus Christi, a college very small in its numbers,
and humble in its buildings, but to which we and our
fellow students formed an attachment never weakened
in the after course of our lives. . . . We were then a
small society, the members rather under the usual age
and with more than the ordinary proportion of ability
and scholarship ; our mode of tuition was in harmony
with these circumstances ; not by private lectures, but
in classes of such a size as excited emulation, and
made us careful in the exact and neat rendering of the
original, yet not so numerous as to prevent individual
attention on the tutor's part, and familiar knowledge
of each pupil's turn and talents. In addition to the
books read in lecture, the tutor at the beginning of the
term settled with each student upon some book to be
read by himself in private, and prepared for the
public examination at the end of term in Hall ; and
with this book something on paper, either an analysis
of it, or remarks upon it, was expected to be produced,
which insured that the book should really have been
read. It has often struck me since that this whole plan,
which is now I believe in common use in the Uni-
versity, was well devised for the tuition of young men
of our age. We were not entirely set free from the
leading-strings of the school ; accuracy was cared for;
we were accustomed to vivA voce rendering, and vivA
voce question and answer in our lecture-room, before
an audience of fellow-students, whom we sufficiently
respected ; at the same time, the additional reading,
trusted to ourselves alone, prepared us for accurate
private study, and for our final exhibitionin the schools.
One result of all these circumstances was, that we lived on the most familiar terms with each other : we might be, indeed we were, somewhat boyish in man- ner, and in the liberties we took with each other ; but our interest in literature, ancient and modern, and in all the stirring matters of that stirring time, was not boyish ; we debated the classic and romantic question ; we discussed poetry and history, logic and philosophy ; or we fought over the Peninsular battles and the Continental campaigns with the energy or disputants personally concerned in them. Our habits were inexpensive and temperate : one break-up party was held in the junior common room at the end of each term, in which we indulged our genius more freely, and our merriment, to say the truth, was some- what exuberant and noisy ; but the authorities wisely forbore too strict an inquiry into this. "
The more remarkable features in the buildings of the College are the fine Perpendicular roof of the Hall, the very interesting old Library, and the curious dial, designed by Charles Turnbull, in 1581, which occupies the middle of the front quadrangle. The College possesses many valuable manuscripts and early printed books, and a collection of mediaeval plate, perhaps unrivalled in England. Many stories have been invented for the purpose of accounting for so large a quantity of plate escaping the melting-pot during the time of Charles the First's requisitions in Oxford, but the simplest and most probable explana- tion is that it was redeemed by a money-payment.
T. Fowler, D.D., President.
For a fuller account of this College, by the same writer, see The Colleges of Oxford, by A. Clark, M.A. ; Methuen, London, 1891. A complete history of the College by Dr. Fowler, with lists of its members, forms vol. xxv. of the publications of the Oxford Historical Society.
