XII.— CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE.
ICHARD FOXE, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal to
Kings Henry VII. and VIII., was the Founder of this College. The
Foundation Charter was signed on March i, 151®, and the first
President and Fellows placed in corporal possession of the buildings on
March 5, following. Foxe, who was a great favourite of Henry VII.,
and practically his Prime Minister, was successively Bishop of Exeter,
Bath and Wells, Durham, and Winchester, then the richest See in
England. The principal event in his life (at least in its far-reaching
consequences) was his negotiation, while Bishop of Durham, of the
marriage between James IV. of Scotland and the Princess Margaret,
eldest daughter of Henry VII., which resulted, a century later, in the
permanent union of the English and Scottish Crowns under James VI.
Amongst the principal benefactors of the College have been Hugh
Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, an intimate friend of the Founder, who
persuaded him to change his original plan of a College for the
education of young monks, connected with the Monastery of St.
Swithin at Winchester, into one for students training for the secular or
parochial priesthood ; William Frost, the Founder's Steward ; John
Claymond and Robert Morwent, the two first Presidents ; Richard
Pate, Founder of the Cheltenham Grammar School, who died in 1588 ; Sir George St. Paul, Bart., who died in
16 1 3, and his wife Frances, subsequently Countess of Warwick ; and, lastly, Thomas Turner, President from
l68£ to 1 7 14, who built the Fellows' Buildings and bequeathed his valuable library to the College.
The Statutes, given by the Founder himself, are of peculiar interest, both on account of the vivid picture which they present of the domestic life of a mediaeval College, and of the provision made for instruction in the new learning introduced by the Renaissance. Their greatest novelty is the institution of a public lecturer, or Professor, in Greek — the first instance, in either University, of the creation of a recognised and permanent office for the pur- pose of giving instruction in the Greek language. There were also to be Professorships of Humanity (or Latin) and of Theology, but the latter appears never to have been actually filled. Instead of it, there appears to have been, during the early years of the College, a Lectureship in Mathematics, the holder of which was the famous Bavarian astronomer, Nicolas Kratzer. The first occupant of the chair of Humanity was the celebrated Spanish humanist, Ludovicus Vives, and of the chair of Greek, Edward Wotton, subsequently Physician to Henry VIII.
Erasmus, writing, shortly after the settlement of the infant society, to John Claymond, the first President, in 1519, speaks (Epist. ed. Le Clerc. No. 438) of the great interest which had been taken in Foxe's foundation by Wolsey, Campeggio, and Henry VIII himself, and predicts that the College will be ranked "inter praecipua decora Britanniae, " and that its " trilinguis bibliotheca " (i.e. in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) will attract more scholars to Oxford than were formerly attracted to Rome. This language, though doubtless exaggerated, shows the great expectations formed by the promoters of the new learning of this new departure in academical institutions.
The Founder, throughout his statutes, fondly describes his College as " alvearium nostrum," our bee-hive. And truly it was a busy hive of learning. The students were to attend early mass at five in the morning. Some of the lectures began at six. Besides the lectures, there were constant disputations in the Hall, exercises to be performed, and examinations to be passed in the evening on the work of the day. Even the Vacations were mainly a respite from University exercises ; the College work, though varied in subject-matter, with less of logic and philosophy and more of literature, going on, in point of quantity, much as usual. The domestic life was simple, and the discipline severe. The Fellows and Scholars were to sleep two and two in a room (a limitation which was a distinct advance on the existing practice at other Colleges), the Fellow in a high bed, and the Scholar in a truckle bed. In the Hall, there were two meals in the day, dinner at eleven, and supper about five or six,
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