24th December 1347. The Glory That Was Pembroke, Cantab.
Today, Christmas Eve in 1347, saw Edward III grant Marie de St. Pol, widow of the Franco-English nobleman Aymer de Valence 2nd earl of Pembroke, a licence of a new foundation, in the new University of Cambridge.
Pembroke is the third oldest Cambridge college, but the oldest with an unbroken constitution from its foundation to survive on its present site. Both the foundation and building of the City’s first college chapel required a papel bull in 1355.
The new foundation, the Hall of Valence Mary, originally gave preference to students born in France and who had studied elsewhere in England and were expected to report those engaged in excessive drinking, lechery and visiting disorderly houses. There was also a limit to graduation parties.
The institution eventually became Pembroke Hall, and College in 1856; the 14th century gatehouse is the oldest in the university. (Don’t confuse with Oxford College of same name).
Matthew Wren, uncle of the architect Christopher, was a Pembroke fellow and chaplain to the future Charles I was imprisoned in the 17thc Civil-War period, ingratiated himself to obtain his release by choosing to pay for a new chapel at Pembroke to be built by Christopher as one of his first works. Matthew also led the movement to rebuild St.Paul’s Cathedral, London after its destruction by fire in early 17thc., to the plans of his nephew.
Pembroke College like all the original medieval collegiate institutions had originally developed out of the monastic role as the repository and transcription of ancient Christian texts and of education for aspiring priests. However as the monastic ideal waned losing the vision of the early founders through lack of zeal, corruption and declining numbers students for the priesthood increasingly gravitated and settled in the Inns and Halls of Oxford and Cambridge.
Post Reformation saw the two ancient English university colleges and Pembroke was no exception, adopting a more secular role for the education of the aristocratic and burgeoning merchant classes, students of Civil Law and those destined for the Church of England, preponderating, to morph in today’s ragbag of alumni many best known as gracing the calling of media/TV and other ‘learned’ vocations.
Refs.
wikipedia.org
1st May 1555.
Christ Church, Oxford is unique in being both college and cathedral, being the third building on the site. Lincoln Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge were not episcopal and so escaped supervision by a bishop.(1)
Today 1st May 1555, Sir Thomas White, (1492-1567) clothier and Lord Mayor of London obtained a Royal Licence to found St John’s College, Oxford, which was endowed with £3,000. Born in Reading he also gave benefactions to Gloucester as well as Coventry.
In 1559 he purchased Gloucester Hall, later Worcester College, Oxford which had 100 scholars in 1560.(2). White was a Catholic who under Queen Mary intended to provide clerics to support the Counter-Reformation. He also acquired land of the former college of St Bernard, a monastic house of Cistercians. (2)
Many were the benefactors of colleges in those days, but with hidden agendas: Lincoln College, Oxford was built by bishop Fleming: ‘to defend [against the Lollards], the mysteries of scripture against those ignorant laymen who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearl’. (So much for Christian charity!)
Fleming acquired a charter on 13th October 1427 to unite three parishes into a college for the study of theology, ‘The empress (sic) and mistress of all the faculties’. But importantly to pray for the welfare of the founder in this life and for his soul in the next.
The dissolved abbey church of Osney (1539), was used by Henry VIII as the cathedral of his new diocese of Oxford between 1541-5, when the seat was moved to the site of the Black Canons of St. Frideswide. In 1546 he founded the College of Christ Church round the new cathedral which required the acquisition of land and livings and manors from religious Houses of Osney Abbey, St Frideswide Priory and the Abbey of Eynsham. (3)
Most colleges were foundations for the education of clerks in holy orders as with Stapeldon Hall by Walter de Stapeldon, later Exeter college.
After the monastic dissolution in the 16thc the two major universities increasingly needed inns for the students, for lodgings and study, as they undertook educational functions hitherto supplied by the abbeys and demand for literacy in affairs of state and a literate clergy to interpret the new Bible of the reformed church ensured a steady growth.
Also secular civic consciousness was growing in the towns; ideas which the Reformation and the 18th century Age of Enlightenment new thinking, were to enhance: a new middle-class versed in the Classics came into being.
Even as early as the late 15thc educational foundations were benefiting from funds diverted from those small and poor priories who with few powerful friends found they were suppressed, with the beneficiaries being the universities John Alcock bishop of Ely dissolved the Benedictine Nunnery of St. Radegard (Radegund), to found Jesus College, Cambridge c1496. William Waynflete bishop of Winchester acquired Selborne Priory 1484 in founding Magdalen College, Oxford. (4)
In the 16thc Lady Margaret Beaufort obtained Creake Abbey after all the residents had died of the plague in 1506; action taken on the advice of John Fisher bishop of Rochester who in 1522 dissolved the Nuns’ House of Bromhall at Higham, to aid St John’s Cambridge, which university also benefited from stone from Ramsey Abbey to build Gonville and Caius, King’s and Trinity Colleges, which on the dissolution of Barking Abbey 1539 acquired all incomes in 1546.
One outcome of the vast amount of wealth re-distributed from the old monastic houses was the provision of six new bishoprics along with twelve professorships which included Regius Professorships being endowed at ‘Oxbridge’. However in the transfer many books were lost either permanently or fell into private hands.
So what constituted a loss for the old monastic houses was turned to profit in the rising influence of the Universities which increasingly acquired a monopoly power and influence, as the power of a classical-based education largely replaced theology, an exclusive power to hold sway for the next five-hundred years.
(1) Founded by Richard Fleming, bishop of Lincoln in 1427, to train graduates to combat heretical doctrines of Wycliffe’s Lollards.
Augustinian Canons at Merton Abbey, Surrey controlled Midsomer Norton Priory, Somerset which became part of the patrimony of Christ Church Oxford.
(2) John Gifford prominent in the 2nd Barons’ War (against Henry III) initiated a gift of land in Oxford to found Gloucester Hall, later Worcester College.
(3) Henry VIII after dissolving the smaller Halls, founded Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College Cambridge. Young monks from Durham Abbey were sent to study at Durham College, Oxford, later to become Trinity.
(4) John Alcock (Alcot), Lord Chancellor (1485-7), opened Henry VII’s first parliament.
Ref:
tudorplace.com/Suppression of English Monasteries.
wikipedia.org
catholicoxford.blogspot.com
web.archive.org/lincoln college.
2nd June 1891. Wrangling.
Today saw the death of Hensleigh Wedgwood, cousin of Charles Darwin and grandson of the famous potter
Barrister, etymologist and Magistrate he famously produced the classic text the Dictionary of Etymology, and on a lower level was noted whilst at Cambridge, after taking the first written exam in the Classics Tripos, for receiving, unofficially from the students, instead of the wooden spoon, the ‘Wooden Wedge’, a pun on his name, for coming last.
This was the time when exams were changing from the medieval oral tradition to being written. However he did better in maths, being 8th Wrangler’ (8th in order of marks).
The word Wrangler stemmed back to the middle ages when exams involved disputation, (wrangling) in the oral tradition. It was in the 18thc that some kind of exam in Maths took place at Cambridge, though questions were given orally and also involved philosophy.
The wooden spoons gradually became larger, measuring 5ft and dangled in a teasing way, by students, from the balcony of the Senate House until the practice was stopped in 1875.
Senior Wrangler Cambridge. 1842.
Those known as mathematical wranglers were ‘senior optime’ and those lower were ‘junior optime’, in terms of marks, which ranged from 7,000 to 300, in an exam which lasted 5 ½ hours a day, for 8 days.
However it should be noted that out of 400 in 1860 3/4 never gained honours and known as Pollmen, so the receiver of the wooden-spoon (an honours man), had about 100 above him, but 300 Pollmen below.
In 1911 the system was changed to degrees in classes. However women no matter how brilliant could take the exams, but unable to receive a degree until 1948.
So brilliant mathematicians such as Philippa Fawcett of Newnham College in the 19th century couldn’t receive her degree, as she was a woman. Then later Joan Clarke, in WWII involved at Bletchley in breaking Enigma Codes, couldn’t receive a degree.(1)
Born in 1803 Wedgwood lived at a time of change of practices which had survived from medieval times, apart from university life.
This was seen in 1835, when as a Magistrate, he was responsible for sending James Pratt and John Smith for trial at the Central Criminal Court for sodomy.
Both were convicted and had the dubious honour of being the last in England to be executed for the then crime, despite Wedgwood’s plea for clemency to the Home Secretary.
Times have changed indeed, for the better.
(1) Her mother founded Newnham College, Cambridge.
References:
wardsbookofdays.
wikipedia.org/Pic.
maths.cam.ac.uk.
11th February 1836.
Oxford’s rise in medieval England owes much to its central position and in that no town had so many roads of general importance converging on it.
However its monopoly in university education along, with Cambridge, was challenged Today when London University was chartered today in 1836.
Famous later for its pioneering external degrees which opened up higher education to the less privileged classes, and being secular, it was where the reforming refugees from Europe came in 1848 after the uprisings.
The House of the Scholars of Merton College, Oxford.
It was in 1277 that Walter de Merton, three times Lord Chancellor and later Bishop of Rochester, added a codicil to his will leaving the residue of his property to found [probably] the first Oxford College, Merton which was founded in stages between 1264 and 1274.
Oxford became a place of learning when in the 12th century Henry II in 1167 ordered home from Paris all English clerks [priests] on pain of losing their benefices.
In 1214 the scholars received a charter from the Papal Legate and appointed a Chancellor, and thus constituted an attack on the monopoly of monastic learning.
The buildings as later seen in William of Wykeham’s, New College, Oxford of 1379, were based on the new manor house plan with a defensive quad entered through gateway with hall, chapel with a dean, and domestic offices.
Enrolment was through the Regents Master, aided by a Proctor and Bedel, who entered the student’s name on a roll-Matricula.(1)
The period now saw monasteries and priories, as Burton Abbey, now sending students, paying £10 per annum, to Gloucester College, the Benedictine House at Oxford, where there had been monastic institutions from the 13thc until the 16thc Monastic Dissolutions.
Gloucester was later re-founded and Incorporated as Worcester College (2). Corpus Christi was originally intended as a Oxford House for the monks of S. Swithin’s, Winchester.
Four disciplines were studied: Law, Medicine, Theology, and Arts (which taught the Trivium: logic, grammar and rhetoric).
It was also the time of the growth of towns and mercantile trade creating a demand for Civil Law as against Church, Canon Law, and the rise and power of a secular legal class along with the independent Inns of Court.
The conflict between ‘town and gown’, with rioting and disputes, which saw students being hanged for a murder, resulted in the 13thc exodus to Cambridge, with the foundation of Peterhouse College taking the statutes of Merton as its model.
Peterhouse Old Court. College founded by Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, in 1284.
By the 17thc Oliver Cromwell attempted to provide an alternative to ‘Oxbridge’ with his New College at Durham which awarded degrees in 1659, and used the Cathedral Chapter House which had been dissolved in 1649.(3)
It was dissolved in 1660, at the Restoration, owing to opposition to the Durham Charter from John Conant, Vice-Chancellor at Oxford, who apart from acquiring the John Selden Library Collection for the Bodleian, also restored caps and hoods which his predecessor John Owen had considered Popish.
After London it was not until the later 19thc that the first of the new civic universities were chartered.
(1) Thus developed the word to Matriculate.
(2) On 29th July 1714.
(3) One Fellow was Israel Tongue who was later implicated in the 17thc Popish Plot.
Ref: wikipedia.org.peterhouse and merton/Pic Images.
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