CHAPTER VII

1692-1709

DR. WOODROFFE AND THE GREEK COLLEGE

ON May 19, 1692, Dr. Byrom Eaton resigned his Principality of Gloucester Hall, and on August 15 following Dr. Benjamin Woodroffe was admitted Principal in his stead. The new Principal was a well-known character in Oxford. His father was one of the ejected clergy; he himself was born in Oxford in 1638, so that at the time of his appointment he was fifty-four. The distinguished position he held would at first sight lead us to suppose that he deserved a respect which he certainly did not inspire. Educated at Westminster, he was in turn student, Canon, subDean, and Dean of Christchurch. The last office he held for only a few days. The appointment was made by James II., and cancelled by his successor in favour of Dean Aldrich. He was a fine scholar-a man of tireless energy and undaunted courage. He was familiar with Greek, French, Italian, Portuguese, and some of the Oriental languages-a very wide range of accomplishment for that day. He had been high in the favour

of the Court, a chaplain of Charles II., and naval chaplain to James, Duke of York, at the time of the engagement with the Dutch at Southwold Bay in 1672. He was one of the earlier Fellows of the Royal Society, and that his fame was not merely local is shown by the fact that he was Lecturer of the Temple, and Canon of Lichfield. He had also held the livings of Piddleton and Shrivenham, and at the time of his appointment to the Principality he was Rector of St. Bartholomew's in the City of London, a living which he held to his death. Yet, in spite of the distinguished position he held, he appears to have excited little except contempt and ridicule at Oxford. Perhaps no better phrase can be found to describe his mental defects than that of Dr. Prideaux, to whom he was "a man of a magotty brain, and a singular method of conduct from all mankind beside." In all the copious Oxford papers of the seventeenth century, it is difficult to find a single good word that was said of him outside the realm of obituary notices. Dr. Prideaux in especial, who was Canon with him at Christchurch, delighted to keep a diary of his numerous follies, which he used to describe in letters to John Ellis-how he "raged most furiously" because the servants of Christchurch had taken away the joint from the table before he appeared; how he "could scarcely be dissuaded from beating a servant who served Dr. Pocock before him. He recommends John Ellis to go and hear him preach at the Temple "if he had a mind to hear some of his nonsense." These sermons of his were an especial annoyance to Dr. Prideaux.

He maliciously relates how Dr. Woodroffe used a

sermon which he had preached on the death of the Duke of York's coachman for a deceased alderman of Oxford. In this same sermon he is credited with having recommended "godfathers to present their godsons with winding-sheets at birth in order to put them in mind of their mortality." Another of his sermons was "the most scandalous duncecall sermon that hath been preached before the University ever since the King's return, as it is agreed on by all that heard it." His relations with women exposed him to equal ridicule.

"Last night" (we are told) "he had Madam Walcup at his lodgings, and stood with her in the great window next the quadrangle, where he was seen by Mr. Dean himself, and almost all the house, toyeing with her most ridiculously, and fanning himself with her fan for almost all the afternoon."

He was shrewdly suspected of fortune-hunting. He married the sister of Sir Blewet Stonehouse, who was reputed to be worth £3,000; but Dr. Prideaux thought the family were "too cunning to be cheated by Woodruffe," and as for the money promised, "he must get it where he can." Whether he got it or not is not recorded; but the marriage took place, and Dr. Woodroffe became a wealthy man. The £3,000 caused no rupture in the family, as is shown by the fact that George Stonehouse, the heir to the baronetcy, was one of the earliest pupils of the Doctor at Gloucester Hall. It is not quite easy at this date to account for these tokens of animosity. The accounts that have been preserved of him are mostly from the pens of his political opponents, and written in days when political animosity was most violent. Even his worst enemies were compelled to acknowledge

the vigour and scholarship of Dr. Woodroffe, and it was held that he was "not soe unfit a man for the Bishoprick of Oxford as some apprehend." But the truth probably is that he had a passion for self-advertisement at a time when self-advertisement was still unpopular. It was felt that his success in life was due rather to his scheming than to merit, and in the staid and oligarchic life of Oxford of that day he appeared little better than an adventurer. It is a significant fact, pointing to jealousy as the chief cause for the general dislike felt for him, that in the last years of his life, when his canonry was sequestrated, when his Hall was empty and his Greek College had proved a hopeless failure, when he himself had suffered imprisonment in the Fleet, the storm of obloquy almost entirely ceases.

But whatever he may have been as a man, there is no doubt that Worcester men owe him a deep debt of gratitude. He restored the Hall when it was practically a desert, and the very existence of the College must be attributed in no small measure to his pertinacity and courage. Nothing could well have been more dismal than the aspect of Gloucester Hall on his assuming office. During the past eleven years there had been only three matriculations at the Hall, and none at all in the last four. Dr. Byrom Eaton, at the time of his resignation, had long been non-resident, and the great storm of January 12, 1690, had added to the desolation which Loggan's sketch of 1675 so forcibly depicts. Within a week of his entry the workmen were put in to repair the Hall, and the magnitude of the repairs that were necessary is shown by the fact that one writer describes it as a "rebuilding" of Gloucester Hall. The

cost of the repairs was, according to one account, £40, and to another £20, a week. Unfortunately, there are no means of knowing their precise nature, and all traces of them were doubtless obliterated during the extensive building operations of the eighteenth century. Wood tells us that,

"being a man of generous and public spirit, he bestowed several hundred pounds in repairing the place, and making it a fit habitation for the Muses, which being done he, by his great interest among the gentry, made it flourish with hopeful sprouts."

Unfortunately, the "hopeful sprouts" came up very slowly. The first was a Frenchman; the next two were respectively a son, aged ten, and a nephew, aged fifteen, of the Principal. 1694 saw four matriculations, and 1695 nine. The Hall reached its zenith in 1697 with eleven matriculations and one migration, and this state of affairs was fairly well maintained till the end of the century; but in 1701 there were no matriculations, and seldom more than two or three till the end of his Principality, and at the date of his death there was hardly one scholar inside the Hall. But from the moment of his assumption of office in 1692, he was keenly interested in another scheme, which is one of the most interesting experiments in the history of the University and of the English Church. This was the establishment of a College at Oxford of boys belonging to the Greek Church, with the object of promoting the union of Christendom.

There have been two or three great movements in this direction in the history of the English Church. The first began in 1616, and persisted for nearly a century; the second began in the first half of the present