a member of the College in 1637, gives an amusing account of “coursing” (now become a sort of free fight) in the schools; of how he stopped the evil custom of “tucking” freshmen (i.e. grating off the skin from the lip to the chin); and how he prevented the Fellows “altering the size of” (i.e. weakening) “the College beer.” Shaftesbury’s future colleague in the Cabal, Clifford, was also at Exeter.
Charles I., in 1636, gave an endowment out of confiscated lands to found Fellowships for the Channel Islands at Exeter, Jesus, and Pembroke, that men so trained might devote themselves to work in the Islands. He made John Prideaux (Rector 1612–1642) and Thomas Winniff (Fellow 1595–1609), Bishops, the former of Worcester, the latter of Lincoln, when he at last tried to conciliate the gentry, who were almost all opposed to Laud’s innovations.
In the Civil War most of the Fellows took the King’s side, and Archbishop Usher sojourned in some wooden buildings then known as Prideaux Buildings, situated behind the old Rector’s house, buildings now partly re-erected in the Turl. The College plate was taken by Charles, although the Fellows had redeemed it by a gift of money; but the King’s needs were overwhelming.
Under the Commonwealth John Conant became Rector, and increased the fame of the College for learning and discipline. “Once[125] a week he had a catechetical lecture in the Chapel, in which he went over Piscator’s Aphorisms and Woollebius’ Compendium Theologiæ Christianæ; and by the way fairly propounded the principal objections made by the Papists, Socinians, and others against the orthodox doctrine, in terms suited to the understanding and capacity of the younger scholars. He took care likewise that the inferior servants of the College should be instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, and would sometimes catechise them in his own lodgings. He looked strictly himself to the keeping up all exercises, and would often slip into the hall in the midst of their lectures and disputations. He would always oblige both opponents and respondents to come well prepared, and to perform their respective parts agreeably to the strict law of disputation. Here he would often interpose, either adding new force to the arguments of an opponent, or more fullness to the answers of the respondent, and supplying where anything seemed defective, or clearing where anything was obscure in what the moderator[126] subjoined. He would often go into the chambers and studies of the young scholars, observe what books they were reading, and reprove them if he found them turning over any modern author, and send them to Tully, that great master of Roman eloquence, to learn the true and genuine propriety of that language. His care in the election of Fellows was very singular. A true love of learning, and a good share of it in a person of untainted morals and low circumstances, were sure of his patronage and encouragement. He would constantly look over the observator’s roll and buttery-book himself, and whoever had been absent from chapel prayers or extravagant in his expenses, or otherwise faulty, was sure he must atone for his fault by some such exercise as the Rector should think fit to set him, for he was no friend to pecuniary mulcts, which too often punish the father instead of the son. The students were many more than could be lodged within the walls: they crowded in here from all parts of the nation, and some from beyond the sea. He opposed Cromwell’s plan of giving the College at Durham the privileges of a University, setting forth the advantages of large Universities and the dangers which threaten religion and learning by multiplying small and petty Academies. He was instrumental in moving Mr. Selden’s executors to bestow his prodigious collection of books, more than 8000 volumes, on the University. In his declining age he could scarce be prevailed upon by his physicians to drink now and then a little wine. He slept very little, having been an assiduous and indefatigable student for about threescore years together. Whilst his strength would bear it, he often sat up in his study till late at night, and thither he returned very early in the morning.”
The Restoration put an end alike to learning and to discipline, to the grief of a few good men, such as Ken, though the Royalists in general issued numerous squibs and satires against the Puritans, which still impose on some writers. Anthony Wood, a strong Royalist and constant resident in Oxford, makes frequent allusion in his diaries to the disastrous effects of the Restoration. “Some cavaliers that were restored,” he says in one place, “were good scholars, but the generality were dunces.” “Before the war,” he says in another place, “we had scholars that made a thorough search in scholastic and polemical divinity, in humane learning, and natural philosophy: but now scholars study these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the University. Their aim is not to live as students ought to do, viz. temperate, abstemious, and plain and grave in their apparel; but to live like gentry, to keep dogs and horses, to turn their studies into places to keep bottles, to swagger in gay apparell and long periwigs.” The difference between a Puritan and a Restoration Head of a House is strongly set out by the contrast between Conant’s government of Exeter and that of Joseph Maynard, who was elected on Conant’s ejection for refusing submission to the Act of Conformity (1662). Wood says—“Exeter College is now (1665) much debauched by a drunken governor; whereas before in Dr. Conant’s time it was accounted a civil house, it is now rude and uncivil. The Rector (Maynard) is good-natured, generous, and a good scholar; but he has forgot the way of a College life, and the decorum of a scholar. He is given much to bibbing; and when there is a music-meeting in one of the Fellows’ chambers, he will sit there, smoke, and drink till he is drunk, and has to be led to his lodgings by the junior Fellows.”
In 1666 pressure was put upon Maynard to resign, and he did so on advice of the Visitor and his brother, Sir John Maynard. The resignation was made smooth for him by the understanding that he should be appointed Prebendary of Exeter in room of Dr. Arthur Bury, who was now elected Rector of Exeter. Dr. Bury wrote a book, famous in the Deist controversy, called The Naked Gospel, which had the distinction of being impeached by several Masters of Arts, and formally condemned and burnt by order of the Convocation of the University. About the time of its publication, Bury got into trouble with Trelawney the Visitor, the same whose name became a watchword in the West (“and shall Trelawney die”), over questions of discipline and jurisdiction. The Visitor expelled Bury and his supporters, July 1690; the decision was appealed against in the Court of King’s Bench, and in the House of Lords, but was finally upheld.
The evil effects of the Restoration in studies and in morals continued. Later on, Dean Prideaux can still say, “There is nothing but drinking and duncery. Exeter is totally spoiled, and so is Christ Church. There is over against Baliol, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but dragooners and tinkers. Here the Baliol men, by perpetual bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots.”
Exeter and Christ Church were both reformed by John Conybeare,[127] a writer famous for his answer to the Christianity as old as the Creation of Matthew Tindal, also an Exeter man.
Jacobite feeling was strong in Oxford, and at the election of county members in 1755, when the Jacobites guarded the hustings in Broad Street, twenty men deep, the Whigs passed through Exeter and succeeded in voting. The Vice-Chancellor, a strong Jacobite, remarked on “the infamous behaviour of one College”; and this led to a war of pamphlets. Christ Church, Exeter, Merton, and Wadham were the four Whig Colleges.
Early in the eighteenth century the front gate and tower and the buildings between this and the Hall were erected by the help of such friends as Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, formerly a Fellow. But in 1709 the library was burnt. The fire began “in the scrape-trencher’s room. This adjoining to the library, all the inner part of the library was destroyed, and only one stall of books or thereabouts secured.” The wind was west, and the smoke must have reached the nostrils of Hearne as he lay abed at St. Edmund Hall, for “he was strangely disturbed with apprehensions of fire.” The library was rebuilt in 1778, and had many gifts of books and manuscripts, and a fund for buying more was established by Dr. Hugh Shortridge.
When the time of religious revival came, John Wesley influenced some members of the College, such as Thomas Broughton (Fellow 1733–1741). During the present century other Fellows were noted in the Evangelical movement; and in the Tractarian movement the names of
