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LINCOLN COLLEGE.
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LATER HISTORY, 1538-1892.— In the history of a
small community like Lincoln College we see in an
intensified form the bitterness of party strife which
from age to age agitated the nation. In the period of
the Reformation, Henry VIII. to Elizabeth, we find
numerous expulsions of Fellows for religion, and
repeated attempts by the Crown to enforce its own
way of thinking by the appointment, contrary to the
College statutes, of outsiders to the Headship of the
College. In the time of the Stuarts, and especially
just before the Civil War, we find frequent brawls in
College, proceeding even to blows ; and these divi-
sions continue till the expulsion in 1648 by the
Puritans of the Royalists, followed in 1660 by the
expulsion of the intruded Puritans by the Royalists,
and in 1662 the ejection of Nonconformists on ' Black
Bartholomew.' Soon the struggle is renewed; and
in 1683 we have a Fellow expelled because he has
spoken against passive obedience, and contrariwise
in 1685 George Hickes,the most distinguished member
of the College, is out-voted for the headship because
he is an out-and-out advocate of the king's divine
right. And so on throughout the eighteenth century,
when Fellows were expelled because of their refusal
to take the oaths to the House of Hanover, into the
nineteenth, when the late James Bowling Mozley was
passed over for a Fellowship because thought to be a
' Newmanite.'
In the midst of all this domestic strife, Lincoln has not failed from age to age to rear men eminent in the pursuits characteristic of the time. A few names may be cited — Richard Knolles, Fellow 1566- 1572, whose History of (he Turks (first edition, Lond. 1603), was a work of rare merit ; William Gifford, Arch-
bishop of Rheims, 1623-29, and Primate of France ;
Robert Sanderson, Fellow 1606- 1619, the acute
logician and casuist ; Sir William Davenant, the
restorer of the drama ; George Hickes, Fellow 1664-
168 1, the pioneer of Northern studies, and a leader of
the Non-jurors ; John Potter, Fellow 1694- 1706,
Greek scholar, and Archbishop of Canterbury ; John
Wesley, Fellow 1726-1751 ; Nathaniel Crewe, Fellow
and Rector, afterwards Bishop of Durham, and John
Radcliffe, Fellow, afterwards the celebrated London
physician, both better known than beloved in their
lifetime, but whose princely benefactions to Oxford
have blotted out the memory of their contemporary
ill-repute ; and, among those whose memory is still
recent, William Jacobson, Bishop of Chester, James
Eraser, Bishop of Manchester, and Mark Pattison.
The College has from first to last been numerically small. Its relative position, as one of the four least populous Colleges, has not altered from Elizabeth's reign to Victoria's. The following are some state- ments of its numbers : 1552, 26 members in resi- dence, i.e., the Rector, eleven Fellows, and fourteen other persons ; 1588, 38 members in residence, i.e , the Rector, twelve Fellows, sixteen commoners, nine servitors; 1605, 54 members in residence; 1612, 100 members, probably not all in residence, i.e., the Rector, twelve Fellows, sixty commoners, and twenty- seven battelars ; 1746, 47 members in residence, i.e., the Rector, twelve Fellows, eight gentlemen-com- moners, eighteen commoners, and eight servitors.
An account of the constitution and history of the College will be found in The Colleges of Oxford (Methuen, 1891).
Andrew Clark.
CoULEGlVM LtNCOL,NIENSE.
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\Facsimile from Hcame.\
