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CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE.
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At these meals the Students were only allowed
to converse in Latin or Greek. They were not
allowed to go out of College, except to the
University Schools, without special leave, nor
unless accompanied by some other student. The
gates were finally closed at eight in the winter,
and nine in the summer. Any breach of rules was
severely punished, and the punishment seems to have
invariably followed on the offence. But this pristine
discipline and laborious mode of life seem to have
succumbed to the religious troubles of Edward the
Sixth's reign, and never to have been wholly revived.
We are peculiarly fortunate in obtaining a glimpse of the interior life of the College within a quarter of a century of its foundation. Laurence Humfrey, President of Magdalen and Regius Professor of Divinity, in his life of John Jewel, the illustrious theologian who was subsequently Bishop of Salisbury, has given us a graphic and tolerably full account of his academical career, and specially of that part of it which was spent within the walls of Corpus. He had come up, when only 13 years of age, to Merton, where he held a Postmastership. The endowment of a Postmastership was, at that time, slender, nor did it, like a Scholarship at Corpus, lead to a Fellow- ship. Hence, for his pecuniary as well as his educational advancement, his Merton Tutors were anxious to place him at Corpus. Accordingly, in August 1539, he stood for a Scholarship and was duly elected. The lectures, disputations, exercises, and examinations prescribed by the Founder seem still to have been retained in their full vigour, though it is curious to find that the author with whom young Jewel was most familiar was Horace, whose works were strangely omitted from the list of Latin books recommended in the original statutes. Jewel, on entering the College, was at once placed in the first Logic class, where he made rapid progress, soon out- stripping his class-mates, though they were senior to him in age. At dinner, he attracted attention by his recitations and declamations, and his exercises, generally, were such as to earn the warm approbation of the President and other authorities of the College. His industry was unintermitting. He rose at four in the morning (one hour before the first Mass), went to bed ' late ' (at ten o'clock), and often spent whole days in the Library. Under these incessant labours his health broke down, for his body was feeble, and his food was too simple and ' scholastic ' ; a word which aptly marks the fact that plain living, hard work and early rising were the order of the day in the English Universities during the first half of the sixteenth century, before they became a common resort of rich men's sons, and while strict discipline was still maintained in the Colleges. During an attack of the plague, when the ' Somato-christiani ' (as the members of Corpus were then commonly called) had retired to their sanatorium at Witney, he suffered so much from the cold, probably from want of a bed- room, as to contract a lameness in one foot which caused him to limp for the rest of his life. Truly, in those days, the approach to learning \vas by no easy or luxurious path !
At a due interval after proceeding to his B.A. Degree, Jewel began to take pupils both in his chamber and in the public rooms of the College. The ardent student was no less assidous in the dis- charge of his duties towards his pupils than towards himself. They not only attended lectures, or received private lessons, but they were examined at night in what they had been taught in the morning, and every
week they wrote a declamation, while they were
constantly writing or reciting something in prose or in
poetry. The discipline was stern, and doubtless
effective. ' Free from anger, ' says his biographer,
' and from other affections, whom he loved he
chastened more severely, or more gently, according to
the measure of the fault ' : His ideas of ' recreation '
were very different from ours, and, perhaps, erred as
much in defect as ours in excess. ' He hardly took
any recreation but walking, and, even then, he was
either wrapt in meditation, or occupied in teaching
his pupils or in disputing, after the method of
Aristotle, with his colleagues.
From what we should now call a Tutorship, Jewel passed to the Readership of Latin, and Humfrey's account of his conduct in this office is interesting as showing that it was still, as the Founder intended it to be, of the nature of a University Professorship rather than a College Lectureship. The lectures, which were partly on the Orators, partly on the Poets, were attended by members of other Colleges as well as his own, and not by juniors only but also by seniors, amongst whom were John Parkhurst, his old Merton Tutor, and Humfrey himself.
One of the most noteworthy points in the sub- sequent history of the College is the leaven of secret Romanism which pervaded it throughout the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, and does not seem to have been entirely worked out till the Revolution. A great quantity of sacred vessels and vestments was concealed in and outside the College throughout the reign of Edward VI., and during the early part of Elizabeth's reign, till, in 1566, the vessels, with the exception of a gold chalice and paten, still existing, seem to have been removed by the Visitor's Commis- sary, though the same, or other vestments, appear still to have been retained in the College down to the time of the Commonwealth. Another point which may be noticed is the almost complete sweep of members of the Foundation which was made by the Parliamentary Visitors in 1648. The President, Robert Newlyn, was, however, restored in 1660, and continued to hold the Presidency till within a few months of the Revolution of 1688, living to be over 90.
The original foundation consisted of a President, twenty Fellows, twenty Scholars, two Chaplains, two Clerks, and two Choristers, the only other members of the College recognised in the Statutes being the eight " Famuli Collegii," and a number, not exceed- ing six, of " filii nobilium aut jure regni peritorum," subsequently called "gentlemen commoners." By the Statutes of 1855, the Fellowships and Scholarships were no longer, as before, confined to particular dioceses and counties, the Scholars no longer had a right of succession to the Fellowships, the clerical restrictions were considerably modified, Exhibitioners were substituted for the Choristers and Clerks, and the six Gentlemen Commoners made way for ordinary Commoners, unrestricted in number. Still further alterations were made by the Statutes of 1882, the clerical restrictions being almost entirely abolished, great elasticity being allowed with regard to the number of Fellows and Scholars, and provision being made for ultimately including no less than five Uni- versity Professors in the College, two of which, those of Latin and Jurisprudence, had already been founded.
Corpus is remarkable for the number and eminence of its distinguished alumni. Amongst these may be enumerated Cardinal Pole, nominated Fellow by the Founder himself; John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Hooker, and John Reynolds, President in
