Page:Oxford men and their colleges.djvu/431

 545

PEMBROKE COLLEGE

546

character also stood high, though Prideaux in 1694 calls it " the fittest colledge in the town for brutes." A Mr. Lapthorne, twenty years later, draws a different picture of it. "I have placed my son in Pembroke Colledge. The house, though it bee but a little one, yet is reputed to be one of the best for sobriety and order." Shenstone entered 1732 with Graves, author of the Spiritual Quixote, a satire on the Methodists. Graves draws a lively picture of the different sets in College. Among the servitors was Whitefield who also entered in 1832. He tells us that he was solicited to join in excess of riot with several who lay in the same room ; but God gave him grace to withstand them. " I had no sooner received the sacrament publickly on a week-day at St. Mary's but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. I daily underwent some contempt from the collegians. Some have thrown dirt at me and others took away their pay from me." Another con- temporary was Blackstone the eminent jurist. At an earlier date the names of Pembroke men include Bishop Timothy Hall, one of the few clergy who read the Declaration of Indulgence, Chief Justice Dyer, Collier, Southern, and at a later date Durel, Hender- son, Gilbert, Valpy, Lempriere, Jeune. The two Beaumonts and Johnson lie in Westminster Abbey, where the remains of Pym also lay for a short while.

This house went through the usual troubles in the 17th century The 18th was its flowering time. In the present century the vigorous administration of Dr. Jeune gave Pembroke a great lift, but it has remained a small but cosy College, noted for its excellent kitchen, its fine show of plate, its compact sociability, while the large proportion of scholars among its members has given it some distinction in the schools. The Eight was head of the River in 1872 and the Torpid in 1877, 1878 and 1879. The Master, Fellows, and Scholars are patrons of eight benefices. In spite of recent changes, the Master must still be in holy orders, and the tutorial fellows are bound to celibacy. There is a flourishing and old-established Literary Club called the "Johnson, "a Debating and a Musical Society, and one of the earliest founded Wine Clubs. It should be mentioned that the College Library has lately had lustre added to it by the unique Aristotelian collection of the late Professor Chandler, presented by Mrs. Sophia Evans.

Douglas Macleane, M.A.

For a fuller account of this College by the same writer, see The Colleges of Oxford (Methuen & Co., 189 1 ), edited by Rev. A. Clark, M.A.

tomb of john noble, 1522.— From Ingram.

2 N