424

W. MAYERS; R. S. HAWKER.

There is a remarkable letter to him from Newman, while an undergraduate, written under strong religious indignation against the revelries and profanities which had grown up round the Trinity College Gaudy. He tells Mr. Mayers that he is intimate with very few. An habitual negligence of the awfulness of the Holy Communion is introduced. How can we prosper?' He also writes to this kind counsellor about his examination hopes and fears. We find Mr. Mayers dining with him at Oriel. Newman's first sermon (June 23, 1824) was preached at Over-Worton, Oxon, which cure Mr. Mayers served. We are told, One day, after working with his private pupils till the evening, he sat down to his article [on Cicero for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana] till four o'clock next morning, and then walked over from Oxford to Worton, a distance of eighteen miles, in order to appear punctually at the breakfast table of a friend, the Rev. Walter Mayers, who on quitting home had committed his pupils in his parsonage to his charge.' On April 1, 1828, Newman writes to his mother, 'I have a sermon to prepare for Worton to-morrow.' This, it is stated, was his friend's funeral sermon1. Mr. Mayers matriculated Dec. 8, 1808; Scholar 1812-16; Steward of Junior Common Room ; B.A. 1812; M.A. 1815.

Ten years before the Tract movement began, ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER, the eccentric high church poet, usually known as Hawker of Morwenstowe, said to be the first clergyman who revived the Edwardian vestments, entered the College. He was born at Stoke Damerel, Dec. 3, 1804, the son of Mr. Jacob Stephen Hawker, a medical man, practising at Plymouth, who was afterwards ordained, and for thirty years Curate and Vicar of Stratton in Cornwall. Robert was brought up by his grandfather, the famous Dr. Hawker, incumbent of King Charles the Martyr, Plymouth, and author of Morning and Evening Portions. Some of his strange pranks are related by Mr. Baring Gould in his Life of R. S. Hawker. Having been articled to a west-country attorney, he persuaded an aunt to send and religious guardian of the youths committed to him. If a tutor was this, he might allowably, or rather fittingly, have received holy orders; but if the view of Hawkins was the true one, then he, Newman, felt he was taking part in a heartless system of law and form, in which the good and promising were sacrificed to the worthless and uninteresting.' Autobiographical Memoir.

But Mr. Mayers died Feb. 22. He was brother-in-law of Miss Maria R. Giberne, who is described in the Reminiscences of Oriel, and who was an intimate and valued correspondent of Dr. Newman till her death in the convent of the Order of Visitation at Autun in 1885. Newman's sister Mary died on Jan. 5, 1828, and on the fiftieth anniversary of the death this lady recalls to him the minute and delicate details of those early days of sacred intimacy.

R. S. HAWKER OF MORWENSTOWE.

425 him to school at Cheltenham and afterwards to Pembroke, where he matriculated April 28, 1823. His father, however, was still a poor curate, and in the Long Vacation of 1824 told him that he could no longer keep him at college. Mr. Baring Gould relates the sequel: 'There lived at Whitstone four Misses l'ans, daughters of Colonel l'ans. They had been left with an annuity of £200 a-piece, as well as lands and a handsome place. . . Directly that R. H. learnt his father's decision, without waiting to put on his hat, he ran from Stratton to Bude, arrived hot and blown at Efford, and proposed to Miss Charlotte l'ans to be his wife. The lady was then aged forty-one, one year older than his mother. She was his god-mother and had taught him his letters.' Such a union, by-the-by, was uncanonical. 'Miss I'ans accepted him and they were married in November, when he was twenty. . . On Hawker's return to Oxford with his wife after the Christmas Vacation (and he took her there riding behind him on a pillion) he was obliged, on account of being married, to migrate from Pembroke to Magdalen Hall.'

Jeune visited him in Cornwall the next year, and joined in some of Hawker's mad pleasantries. (It was about this time that he astonished the people of Bude by personating during several moonlight nights a mermaid with comb, glass, and wig of seaweed, chanting among the rocks and waves.) He took B.A. in 1828, and was ordained in 1829. Coming up in 1836 for M.A. he observed Jeune, as Dean, trying to pilot to the Vice-Chancellor's chair a very corpulent gentleman-commoner, whose unwieldy form got hitched more than once in the crowd. Hawker said in a deep whisper: 'Why, your peg's surely mazed, maister.' Spasms of uncontrollable laughter choked Jeune's utterance of the 'Praesento ad vos.' In 1827, Hawker won the Pompeii Newdigate. His volumes of religious verse afterwards gave him a foremost place among the poets of the Church Revival. But it is his extraordinary personality which has most characterized the memory of the Cornish vicar. A very remarkable portrait is prefixed to Mr. Baring Gould's Memoir. Hawker died August 10, 1875-in what communion was afterwards a matter of dispute and recrimination. Everything the man did was, perhaps purposely, bizarre and unaccountable, down to the last. The celebrated 'Trelawney' ballad, or Song of the Western Men, which even Macaulay and Scott mistook for an antique, owed its publication to Davies Gilbert. Mr. Alfred Nutt styles Hawker's unfinished Quest of the Sangraal 'a magnificent fragment.' A recent critic says, 'It is austerely great and beautiful, a thing of burning imagination and vehemence, steeped in the atmosphere of old dreams and early mysteries, profoundly and passionately musical, yet distinct and firm throughout.'

During the Tractarian warfare Dr. JOHN STEDMAN (matriculated 1806) published a Latin letter from Erasmus to Gregory XVI (not

426

TRACTARIAN CONTROVERSY.

unlike Dr. Dickinson's Pastoral Epistle from His Holiness the Pope, 1836), entitled Erasmi Roterodami ad Gregorium Dec. Sext. Pont. Epistola Singularis. Oxonii, Baxter, 1841. His father, THOMAS STEDMAN (entered the College 1768), succeeded Dr. Adams at St. Chad's, Shrewsbury.

The memorable formula 'Nobis procuratoribus non placet' was not used during the Tractarian movement for the first time in 1844. In 1836 the Rev. EDMUND GOODENOUGH BAYLY', Fellow of Pembroke, Proctor with the Rev. Henry Reynolds, of Jesus College, used the words on the occasion of the proceedings against Hampden. The following account is taken from the Life of Dean Stanley (i. 158):—

'The agitation grew every week, and on March 11th the "Heads," by a majority of one, consented to submit to Convocation a statute which deprived the new Regius Professor of two of the functions attached to his office, viz. of his place on the board for the nomination of Select Preachers, and also on that of taking cognizance of heretical preaching at Oxford, on the ground that "in consequence of his public writings the University had no confidence in the present Professor." The day fixed for the Convocation was March 22nd. Dr. Hampden's inaugural lecture was delivered on March 17th, and was followed by a second pamphlet from Dr. Pusey-" Dr. Hampden's Past and Present Statements compared."

'When the decisive day arrived the Sheldonian Theatre was crowded with an excited throng of graduates and undergraduates. But the two Proctors brought the proceedings to an abrupt close by exercising their right of veto, and the assembly broke up amidst shouts, groans, and shrieks from galleries and area, such as no deliberative assembly probably ever heard.'

In a number of the Oxford Chronicle of 1840 the following appears :

'During the past week two more victims to the treacherous dealing of University Professors and Tutors have openly seceded from the Establishment and joined the Communion of Rome; their names are Mr. Peter Renoux, a Bible Clerk of Pembroke College, and Mr. Douglas, B.A., a Gentleman-Commoner of Christ Church. Both parties, we understand, are now with Dr. Wiseman at Oscott. . . . Mr. Renoux is the reputed author of a tract on The Holy Eucharist, at first attributed to Mr. Williams, and which, as we have reason to believe, was published with the knowledge and sanction of Mr. Keble.'

Sir PETER LE PAGE RENOUF, the distinguished Oriental scholar here spoken of, entered March 12, 1840 (son of Joseph Renouf, of Guernsey) as Bible Clerk; a few months later he became Oades Exhibitioner. He resigned in 1842. In 1855 he became Professor of Ancient 'Mr. Bayly died Oct. 3, 1886, aged eighty-two. The Tutors' Protest against the Gorham Judgment was signed in 1850 by both the Pembroke Tutors.

TRACTARIAN CONTROVERSY.

427.

History and Eastern Languages in the Roman Catholic University of Ireland. From 1864 to 1886 he was one of H.M. Inspectors of Schools. In 1885 Mr. Renouf was made Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. He was knighted last year (1896) at the Birthday.

A leader on the Evangelical side in the middle of the century was CHARLES EDWARD OAKLEY, who came up from Rugby as an Exhibitioner Feb. 20, 1851; afterwards of Wadham and Magdalen. He took a brilliant first-class in Law and History, in which School he was in 1859-60 an Examiner; Johnson Theological Scholar 1855; B.C.L. and M.A. 1857. Mr. Oakley went to the Crimea as Chaplain to the Forces. Afterwards he was Rector of Wickwar, 1856, and of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 1863. He declined the bishoprick of Melbourne, He died Sept. 15, 1865, aged thirty-four. Lady Georgina Moreton was his wife.

I may here glance at the names of some scholar-divines of the closing Georgian time. JOHN VINICOMBE, B.D., whose fine portrait by Opie was bequeathed to the College by Sir Rose Price, was Ossulston Fellow from 1783 to 1803, and Tutor. He was for several years in the West Indies with Mr., afterwards Sir Rose, Price, a fellow Cornishman. Mr. Vinicombe died, somewhat mysteriously, in College Feb. 29, 1808. He bequeathed £50 to buy books for the Library. THOMAS HANCOCK, Scholar 1812-17, was Head Master of Caermarthen Grammar School, dying April 6, 1824, aged thirtyseven.-Dr. CHARLES KEVERN WILLIAMS, Scholar 1820-6, Fellow 1826-30, D.D. 1844, was Head Master of Lewes Grammar School 1829. Dr. CHARLES PENNY (matriculated 1827, D.D. 1850) was Head Master of Crewkerne Grammar School 1838-75; Rector of Chaffcombe 1848-75.-ALFRED WALLIS STREET, Scholar 1838-43 (he entered Magdalen Hall March 30, 1833, aged twenty-four), was Professor at Bishop's College, Calcutta, 1839-51.-Dr. GEORGE RICHARDS (matriculated April 27, 1837; D.D. 1858) was Senior Tutor Chaplain and Warneford Professor of Classics in Queen's College, Birmingham, 1846-55; Rector of Marlingford 1880.-JAMES WHITE (matriculated 1823), an historical and miscellaneous writer, was Vicar of Loxley, and died March 26, 1862.

An eminent Queen's Counsel, GEORGE MORLEY DOWDESWELL, entered in 1825. Bencher of the Inner Temple 1867; Treasurer 1883; Recorder of Newbury 1854.-JOHN GERVAS HUTCHINSON BOURNE (matriculated 1821; Fellow of Magdalen 1828) became Chief Justice of Newfoundland. Ob. 1845.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

BICENTENARY-MODERN BUILDING AND REBUILDING

THE WOLSEY ALMSHOUSE-THE BACK LODGINGS.

DR. SERGROVE, we have seen, died April 16, 1796, and in his room was chosen, on April 28, JOHN SMYTH, for whom see among the Benefactors (p. 304). The long Mastership of his successor, Dr. GEORGE WILLIAM HALL, lasted from Nov. 2, 1809, to Dec. 10, 1843 an ancient Whig, who gradually softened down into a moderate but consistent Conservative 1.' A window in the north aisle of Gloucester Cathedral and a tablet in the south cloister (where he is buried) record his memory. His father was Mr. John Hall, of Chelsea, historical engraver to George III. Like Dr. Sergrove he was educated at St. Paul's School, and then tem o ari'y at Abingdon. He entered as a Wightwick Scholar Nov. 4, 1788. Fellow and Tutor 1795; D.D. 1809; Select Preacher 1810. Rector of Taynton, Gloucestershire, 1 10. Vice-Chancellor 182c-24. Some that remember him describe Dr. Hall as a little mild man with kindly face, not a striking scholar or character, but, it seems, keenly interested in books and antiquities. One who was at the College in George IV's days tells me he never preached, lectured, or dined. He had however a vigorous Vicegerent in CHARLES WIGHTWICK. The same old Pembrochian writes concerning Ruler Wightwick':-The crack of his whip as he crossed the quad, on reaching his rooms (in the S. E. corner), from the country at the beginning of each term was the mot d'ordre for the term, and all eyes were centred on him as autocrat of the whole College. The Master and other fellows and tutors in his presence were mutes, and his word was law, as far as regarded all the doings and discipline of the undergraduates, before, during, and I believe after my time. To me he was a special patron and a helper in books, inasmuch as he gave me breakfast and private help twice a week at his rooms without any charge and from pure good will.' He was Proctor in 1812; Senior Bursar from 1826. He died Rector of Brinkworth, Wilts. The handsome portrait in the 1 Gloucester local press.