appointed this bearer to deliver you so much of the same CHAP. IV. pletion of the founda 20 May, 1598 master. In the year 1599, the buildings were completed, and eleven fellows, chosen from different colleges, were appointed. The free Of these, the two who represented St John's College-Thomas Gataker and Samuel Ward-far surpassed the rest in the reputation they subsequently achieved. college poor. The defects adverted to by Fuller in his description of spamet his own college, this Benjamin College,' as he terms it,-leave the as being low, lean and little' at its birth, were remedied long before his epithet ceased to be applicable. The slender fund of five thousand pounds,-alas! what is that,' ejacu lates the historian, 'to buy the site, build, and endow a college','-was augmented by several benefactions from Sir John Harington himself, by Mr Leonard Smith, a citizen and fishmonger of London, and by bequests from other charitable persons; but, notwithstanding, in the year 1612, the executors found it necessary to ordain that, whereas, much more than her [the countess's] legacy had been expended in building and endowing the college, and yet their estate was not sufficient for the maintaining a master and ten fellows, there should be but seven of these, unless the revenues of 1 Ibid. Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p. 291. CHAP. IV. the college should hereafter be sufficiently encreased. And that, whereas the master, by the college statutes, was allowed only twenty pounds per annum, and two shillings by the week for commons, and each fellow only forty shillings per annum and two shillings by the week for commons, the former should have an additional allowance of £5. 128. per annum, and each of the latter an addition of £2. 16s. per The Blundell scholarships. annum'.' The feature, however, which more especially calls for comment in connexion with the endowments of Sidney College, are the scholarships founded by Mr Blundell, a wealthy clothier of Tiverton in Devonshire, who bequeathed the munificent sum of two thousand pounds for the foundation of six scholarships at either of the universities or at both, but restricted them to students who had been educated at his own foundation of Tiverton school and were in need of pecuniary aid. Two of the scholarships were accepted by Balliol College, Oxford; and it was at first designed that two should be attached to each of the colleges of Emmanuel and Sidney at Cambridge. The conditions involved in the acceptance of the scholarships were however irksome, if not humiliating, for it was required that each senior scholar should be deemed in every way a fellow' and receive no less than fifteen pounds. per annum, an income, it will be noted, approximating to the original income of the master of Sidney himself. In order 1 Documents, 1 585-6. Dr Ward in his Adversaria says: The only land which is given for the maintenance of the foundation of the college, is, the manor of Saleby (It. terby) in Lincoln-hire, which we hold by feoffees in trust, for that it is holden by knight's service, whereas our mortmain is only for land hell in soccage tenure. The yearly revenue when first it was given to our college by my lord Harrington was £120 per ann., but since it is raised almost to £150 per ann., and we hope will continue at this rate. Besides this my lord Harrington gave us a rent charge of £30 per ann., which is paid out of the manor of Baggington in Warwickshire by Sir Henry Good. yere. Sum total £180.' Baker MSS. 11 351. He adds that, supposing all the fellows to be ministers, the allow ance for the ten would be only £72 per annum; the scholars were allowed only 124. per week. Ibid. Dr Ward in his Adversaria under date 31 Aug. 1612, says: D. Higgs told me that Balliol Coll. would never have condescended to take these covenants, but that only y abate of the Fellows was confined to the will, for otherwise they would overtop the other Fellows, con-idering y great allowance...... 4. That the founding of these places caused more trouble in the college, than all the business beside, for the twenty years he was fellow. 5. That these places were to render these terms more palatable, it was further provided CHAP. IV. that the master was also to receive two pounds out of the endowment and the college one pound for 'repairs.' But notwithstanding these allurements, the scholarships were declined They are by more than one college at Oxford and were ultimately rejected at Emmanuel;-the two designed for that society Cambridge were accordingly added to those already allotted to Sidney'. declined both and at Statutes of Collega conception senare for The original statutes of Sidney College, given by the Original executors in 1598, are notable rather for their exuberance of ner diction than for any originality of thought, being in most of their provisions little more than a transcript of the code of Emmanuel. By the adoption of a time-honoured simile, the The main college is compared to a hive or seminary of the Church, that of but one whose inmates are encouraged to roam forth at will the Church to gather honey from all kinds of flowers, so that when at length they permanently quit their place of abode, they may seek other 'sedes Ecclesiae' and there deposit some of the stores they have gathered. Such is the foundress's express design and desire, whereof should any member of the college prove himself disregardful, refusing to toil for so beneficial a result, the rest are enjoined to pursue him with 'bites and stings, and to harass him in every way until he shall have been driven forth from the hive as a useless drone'. Those expanded to two fellowships and two 2Nec modo seminarium angustum CHAP. IV. statutes which relate to the functions and powers of the master differ somewhat from those of Emmanuel, in that his authority is slightly enhanced. In the event of not considering it desirable to elect a master from their own body, the fellows are instructed to give the preference to a member of Trinity College, not (as at Emmanuel) to Christ's. The statute de Mora Sociorum in Collegio, transcribed from the code of Emmanuel, was rescinded, as already noted', after the death of Sir John Harington, by the surviving executor. The statute de Mira resanded The only feature that presents us with any novelty of conception in the code of Sidney, as finally left by the exechcutors, is to be found in a 'Recognitio' or revision of the e statute de Sociorum Qualitate, passed early in the seventeenth century; and the society which educated Thomas Gataker, Fuller, Bramhall, and Seth Ward, may also recall with pride that it was the first Cambridge college which opened its fellowships to those of Scottish or Irish birth,-requiring only that such candidates should previously have studied six years in the university and should be of the standing, at least, of bachelor of arts. John Young, a Kentchman, It was by virtue of this innovation that, in the year 1606, elected fellow one John Young, who is described as 'the first Scottish man T. A who ever kept his acte and tooke degree in the universitie',' was elected a fellow of Sidney. The statement, though not to be accepted without qualification, brings home to us very forcibly the small amount of polite and lettered intercourso that existed between England and Scotland prior to the union of the crowns. Scotchmen who sought in those times hand for abler teachers or a wider range of culture than were between the ↑ supra, pp. 315, 317, Documents, un 576. It is however certain that Scotchmen were admitted to fellowships long before this time, The two cider sons of John Knox, Nathannel and Eleazar, though born in Scotland, were admitted fellows of St John's as natives of Richmondshire. See Baker-Mayor, 1290; M Crie, Life of Knoz (ed. 1874), p.326. The mediaeval universities were more catholic in this respect than those of post-Reformation times (sco Vol. 1 239). Mr F. Maxwell Lyte, who is now engaged on a History of the sister university which will be re ecived with much interest, has kindly drawn my attention to a statute of Queen's College, Oxford (A.D. 1310), which expressly forbids the exclusion of anyone from the foundation on the score of nationality[see Appendix (E)). Baker MSS. x 416. afforded by the chairs of their own struggling and poorly- CHAP. IV. endowed universities, betook themselves to Paris and to Poitiers, to Padua and to Geneva, but rarely to Oxford or to Cambridge. Although therefore at the time when John Young was admitted to his fellowship at Sidney, nearly two centuries had elapsed since the foundation of the first Scottish university, the intercourse between the two English universities and the centres of the higher education north the Tweed had been so slight and casual as scarcely to call for notice in our preceding chapters. It will, however, at outline of this stage of our enquiry, be not without advantage to note the enttish some of the more important features connected with the rise and earlier developement of the higher schools of Scotland. the history of universities. OP THR A D. 1411. college The first university was that of St Andrews, founded in Forsdation 1411 by Henry Wardlaw, the bishop of that see, and modelled ERITY after the constitution of the university of Paris'. It acquired A all its three colleges,-St Salvator's, St Leonard's, and St three Mary's, before the Reformation; the first having been founded in 1456 by bishop James Kennedy; the second, in 1512, by the youthful archbishop, Alexander Stuart, natural son of James IV., and John Hepburn, the prior of the monastery of St Andrews; and the third, also in 1512, by the Beatons, who in the year 1537 procured a bull from popo Paul 11 dedicating the college to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Assumption and enriching it with further endowments, The most ancient of the universities of Scotland, with its three colleges, was thus, it will be noted, reared in an atmosphere of mediaeval theology and undoubtedly designed as a bulwark against heresy and schism. But by a strange irony of fate,' says a recent writer', 'two of these colleges became, almost from the first, the foremost agents in working the overthrow of that Church which they were founded to defend.' St Leonard's, more especially, like St John's or tenant's 1 St Andrews was accordingly di vided like Paris into four nations': these were Fife, Lothian, Angus, and Alban. See an interesting article by Principal Shairpin Fraser's Magazine June, 1882, entitled The Earliest |