Literary Landmarks of Oxford/Lincoln
LINCOLN
Lincoln was founded early in the Fifteenth Century by a certain Bishop of Lincoln as "a little College of Theologians," instituted " to defend the mysteries of the Sacred Page, against those ignorant Laics who profane, with swinish snouts, its most holy pearls."
Lincoln's most distinguished son, perhaps, was the Theologian John Wesley, who went to it two centuries later, but it has had, nevertheless, strong literary Laics on its list.
Robert Sanderson, another Bishop of Lincoln, and himself a son of Lincoln College, certainly deserves a place in these records, as the accepted author of the "Preface to the Book of Common Prayer," beginning, "It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England," etc., and as the alleged author of the "General Thanksgiving," and of the "Prayer for All Conditions of Men."
He entered Lincoln in 1603, he was graduated in 1606, when he became a Fellow. Two years later he was appointed Reader in Logic. In 1646, he was Regius Professor of Divinity in the University. He was removed by the Parliament in 1648, and he was reinstated at the Restoration, in 1660.
John Wesley was a Fellow of Lincoln for some years, during which period, according to tradition, he occupied the rooms variously described in the guide-books as being " Over the passage from the First Quadrangle into the Chapel Quadrangle," or "Between the First and Second Quadrangles"; or "Between the Outer Quadrangle and the Chapel Quadrangle."
His life there was a quiet, but a very busy, one. And then and there, he, and his followers, were first called "Methodists," on account, it is said, of what even their detractors considered to be the Method of their madness. The head of the MetHodists lectured upon Greek and Philosophy; while he studied, and diligently, Divinity and Mathematics.
Wesley's pulpit, so styled, is still preserved in the ante-chapel of Lincoln; and the earliest duty assigned to him after his election to a Fellowship of Lincoln, was to preach the St. Michael's Sermon, on Michaelmas day in 1726.
Dr. Murray, the present Rector of Lincoln, knows of no reason, or authority, for ascribing "Wesley's Rooms" to Wesley. They may, of course, have been Wesley's; they have been so called by more than one generation of Lincoln
ians, but the Rector fancies them to have been the invention of some clever Hall-porter, who handed them down to his descendants in the lodge for the sake of the shillings which still pour in from the reverent pilgrims—especially American pilgrims—who visit them now, for Wesley's sake. The pilgrims are determined to see "Wesley's Rooms," and these Rooms, where ignorance is bliss, will do as well as any others—for a shilling a head!
Southey, in his "Life of Wesley," speaks of the scoffing crowds who surrounded Wesley on public occasions, and of the attention he attracted because of his long and flowing hair, which he refused to let the barbers touch, on the ground that the money spent for dressing it—no small item then—would do more good if given to the poor and to the needy than to the hair-dressers, who needed it not. A pupil, and a friend and follower of Wesley at Lincoln was John Hervey, author of a once famous and exceedingly popular book, with a not very cheerful title, "Meditations Among the Tombs." He was sent to Lincoln in 1731; and he is said to have lived there a somewhat idle life until he came under the influence of the Methodists in 1733. He is credited with having been one of the quietest, gentlest, most unworldly of men, who was never known to have been in a passion; and, above all, he gave to the poor all the no small profits derived from his literary work.
Robert Montgomery, who had already made a name for himself by his versification, entered Lincoln, as a Commoner, at the age of twenty-two, in February, 1830, paying for his tuition by the profits of his pen. He was by no means popular with his class-mates, some of whom started the rumor, which seems to have been more than a rumor, that his father was a circus-clown; and the youth was the victim of all sorts of practical jokes. It is said of Montgomery that his vanity led him to ask the Vice-Chancellor that a certain public examination of him might be postponed until vacation, in order to avoid the crowds who were sure to gather to listen to the eloquence of "so distinguished a poet." The Vice-Chancellor did not comply with the request; and it is not recorded that the crowd was unusually dense, either in numbers or in intellect.
In 1832, when Montgomery advertised his forthcoming work, "The Messiah," he added, on the title-page, that it was "By the Author of 'The Omnipresence of the DeitY'" the name of a previous work!
Tradition says, in rather a vague way, that Montgomery's rooms, in Lincoln, were "in the Farther Quadrangle, East Side, Central."
The only Literary Landmark which William Shakspere is supposed to have left in Oxford was William Davenant, said to have been an undergraduate of Lincoln. He was unquestionably the son of his mother, and he was born at Oxford in The Crown Inn, of which his mother was landlady. Master John Aubrey reports her as being a beautiful woman, of good wit, but of light import. The establishment over which she ruled was demolished, according to tradition, in the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century, but its site, on Cornmarket Street, is said, by certain authorities, to be now occupied by a portion of The Roebuck Hotel, and consequently to continue in the same line of business. Perhaps the present court-yard of The Roebuck was the court-yard of The Crown, and familiar to the Bard of Avon, who is believed to have made this his hostelry on his journeyings between Stratford and London.
There is at this day, nearly opposite The Roebuck, and approached through a little archway, an ancient Crown Inn, picturesque to a degree in its old-fashioned irregularity of tumble-down, uncomfortable architecture; but we cannot be certain that it has any connection, except in name, with the establishment over the way. Which of these was "Shakspere's Oxford Hostelry," as the present Crown now claims to be, it is not easy to determine positively. The present landlady of the present Crown, naturally very much interested in her subject, says, without apparent reason, that her Crown is as old as Shakspere's and Davenant's time. That, so far as she can learn, it was always called The Crown. That there is hardly any possibility of a town of Oxford's size having two inns in the same street, bearing the same name, and the same sign. That The Roebuck is unquestionably modern, as it now stands; that the fact that The Crown, as Shakspere knew it, stood on "the left hand side of the road" might mean either side of the road, because "the left hand side of the road " would, of course, be one side of the road, as one travelled from London to Stratford and the other side of the road, as one journeyed from Stratford to London. And upon these facts she bases her claim.
It is as curious as it is perplexing to read the varieties of views contained in the various annals of Oxford as to the actual site of this Crown Inn of the Davenants. Mr. C. J. H. Fletcher, in his somewhat elaborate " History of the Church of St. Martin," placed the inn "on the East Side of Cornmarket Street, opposite the Church." This would point to The Roebuck, although The Roebuck is by no means directly opposite the church, The Golden Cross, a very ancient tavern, being much nearer to the corner. Murray, in his "Handbook of Oxfordshire," says that the site of the Crown is now occupied by the Metropolitan Bank, on the west side.
Aga's "Plan of Oxford," an original copy of which, much worn and torn, is preserved in the Bodleian Library, shows distinctly, a narrow country lane running between the grave-yard of St. Martin's Church and the site of the Bank, which seems to occupy the old site of the front of the present Crown; and this would show the present Crown to have been, in days gone by, at least "opposite the church."
But later and very careful and conscientious and intelligent inquirers have established what they consider to be undoubtedly the site as on the west side of Cornmarket Street No. 3, south of The Roebuck, and on premises now occupied by a firm of tailors, Messrs. Hookham & Gadney. The old Crown Inn, they say, was pulled down in 1773, when an unquestionably old Inn, over the way, which was in the habit of changing its name, thought this a good opportunity to call itself The Crown; and as The Crown it is still known.
Not many years ago a workman, making some repairs in the second story of the present tailor's shop, and in the room which is supposed to have been Shakspere's—everything in this connection seems to be "supposed" found under a plaster, or canvas, covering on the walls, interlaced letters, Latin texts and inscriptions which are supposed—again "supposed"—to belong to Elizabethan times. All these interlaced letters and Elizabethan texts are now once more covered with modern wall- paper of ugly design ; and nobody can tell what is behind it, although the hewn timbers go back to the end of the Sixteenth Century.
All this is set down here, too fully perhaps, by the present searcher, because it interested him so greatly during his six weeks in Oxford. He apologizes for its prominence, moved thereto by the fact that so many of the present-day Oxford antiquaries, who so kindly showed him things, showed him the things, without apology, which appealed to them, but which had nothing whatever to do with his own line of research. To oblige his friends he has wasted hours in looking for a window, or the spot where a window might possibly have been, out of which, perhaps, may have looked some college Founder or Benefactor, whose name he never heard of before, and never wants to hear of again. His Founders are type-founders only. The only Benefactors he cares for—in Oxford at least are the men who have conferred benefits with their pens.
At the original Crown, wherever it was, Davenant, when he was ten or twelve years old, wrote an alleged "poem" bearing the title, "In Remembrance of Master William Shakspere," which, however, was not published until many years later.
Born in Oxford, Davenant, according to Wood, went to the school of a noted Latinist and Grecian, who taught privately in All Souls Parish, or in the Free School adjoining to Magdalen College. Aubrey says he fears that Davenant was drawn from school before he was wise enough; but Wood thinks that the youth was educated in academic learning at Lincoln College in 1620 or 1621, or thereabouts, and that "he obtained there some smattering in logic; but his geny, which was always opposed to it, led him into the pleasant paths of poetry, so that he wanted much of university learning; yet he made as high and noble flights in the poetical faculty as fancy could advance without it."
Wood presumes that Davenant made but a short stay at college; and some authorities claim that Davenant's whole life at college, as Wood has set it down, rests upon mere presumptive evidence.
In St. Martin's Church Shakspere is said to have stood as godfather to the infant Davenant, holding the babe in his arms before the font, and taking the vows which, no doubt, as is the usual way in such cases, he never thought of again. But this, as in all matters relating to Shakspere, is once more mere presumptive evidence. Shakspere himself did not sign the registry of Davenant's birth, and his name, if it be his name, was probably in the handwriting of the parish-clerk.
Of the original St. Martin's Church nothing now remains but a renewed, and restored, tower, looking as modern and fresh as chisel can make it. And little is left in Oxford which is associated with Shakspere, but the name of the most famous and familiar of his heroes.
On a dead wall, in the summer of 1899, near to The Crown Inn, and near to the Church of Shakspere's St. Martin's, was posted a notice to the effect that certain household goods would be sold publicly at the Corn Exchange by Hamlet & Dulake, Auctioneers. And the natural query of the Shaksperean student was: "Why Dulake?"
The front of St. Martin's, as being at the junction of four of the most important thoroughfares of Oxford, to wit, High Street, Queen Street, St. Aldate Street, and Cornmarket Street, was, not infrequently, the scene of those famous Town and Gown encounters which have become historic; and the narrations of which have sometimes become Homeric. There are said to be records of Town and Gown Rows as early as the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. And, no doubt, the scholars and the citizens have been in occasional active antagonism from the earliest period of the academic history of Oxford. They rowed, from the beginning, by tongue and by arms, upon all sorts of subjects; prices of provisions, of house-rents, of lodging, of table-board, and even upon points of social dress and etiquette. And, in the early days, they did not always fight with their fists. They went at it, if not with tongs and hammers, at least with knives, daggers, battle-axes, swords, cudgels, stones, and cross-bows. The ancient Statutes of the University show that the students were usually armed, in feudal times, as a mere matter of the necessity of self-protection, in a state of semi-civilization. We read that one who merely threatened a fellow-student with bodily harm was fined twelve pence; that he "who committed an assault by pushing with the shoulder or by smiting with the fist," not only in the foot-ball field, but in the streets or the quads, paid four shillings for the privilege; but if he hit with a cudgel or stone, it cost him two shillings and eight pence more. Ten shillings was the charge for striking an enemy with a short knife, long knife, battle-axe, dagger or other warlike implement.
It will be remembered that Mr. Verdant Green, who is always cropping up in Oxford, once met the Illiterati at the Carfax, when he saw, and felt, and, by the aid of his friends, conquered. There is still preserved a touching picture of the great Giglamps, with brown paper and vinegar upon his lacerated forehead, celebrating at The Roebuck this victory over the Townsmen, assisted in his paeans by Mr. Bouncer, Mr. Flexable Shanks, Mr. Charles Larkyns, and last but by no means least, by the Putney Pet, a Professional Prize Fighter imported from London for the occasion; who was smuggled, in cap and gown, into the affray, to the great surprise and discomfiture of the civic enemy. Verily, times are changed. But there were giants in those days! The Town and Gown Row, like certain other things in Oxford, good and bad, is now, happily for Gown and for Town, a thing of the past.
Lincoln, in the early years of its career, was rather severe in its rules in regard to the language of its students; and we are told that one John Taverner, in 1652, was fined thirteen shillings and four pence "for swearing two oaths, as did appear upon testimony." Unfortunately there is no record of what John said!
Thirteen shillings and fourpence, like all pounds, pence, and shillings, went farther two hundred and fifty years ago than they do now. Thirteen shillings and fourpence is equal in American currency to about three dollars and forty-one cents; and, it can easily be reckoned, if such laws were made, and rigidly enforced, by the institutions of learning on the western side-Atlantic, and in our own times, that the incomes of all colleges would be considerably increased.
It was less expensive for the dogs of Lincoln to bite than to bark, for it seems that in October, 1639, two Fellows (Fellows not always, but very often, are Tutors or Professors, be it remarked) did fall out and fight. Richard Kilbye's head "was sore bruised and beaten" by John Webberley; and the College ordered Webberley "to pay the charge of the surgeon for healing Mr. Kilbye's face." The pugnacious John escaped more cheaply, probably, than did the profane John; notwithstanding the highly moral sentiment that the hands of little Fellows were never meant to scratch each others eyes out.