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CHAPTER V.

CAMBRIDGE AT THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL

LEARNING.

PART II:-BISHOP FISHER.

PART II.

FISHER
b. 1459 (?).

age and

tion.

IN the famous old cytye' of Beverley, as Lydgate terms CHAP. V. it', was born, about the year 1459, John Fisher, afterwards bishop of Rochester and, during the first quarter of the J sixteenth century, the leading spirit in the university of 13 (7) Cambridge. He was the son of Robert Fisher, mercer of His parentBeverley, and Agnes his wife. It was the father's wish early educathat the boy should receive a better education than ordinary, and John was accordingly sent to receive instruction in grammar in the school attached to the collegiate church at Beverley. It appears that at the time when he was a scholar there, Rotheram, the munificent chancellor of Cambridge, was provost of the church', and it is not improbable that young Fisher, as a boy of promise, may even thus early have attracted the notice of one whom he must have often met in after years. When Fisher was still a lad of thirteen he lost his father; the latter was, it would seem, a man of considerable substance, and, judging from his numerous bequests to different monastic and other foundations, religious after the fashion of his age. In the course of a few more years the son, then about eighteen, was entered at Michaelhouse, under William de Melton, Entered at fellow and afterwards master of the college. In 1487 he house. proceeded to his degree of bachelor of arts; was soon after elected fellow, proceeded to his degree of master of arts in 1491, filled the office, of senior proctor in 1494, and became 1 See Appendix (A). * Cooper, Athenæ, 1 1.

Michael

PART II.

CHAP. V. master of his college in 1497-facts which, as his bicgrapher observes, sufficiently indicate the estimation in which he was held1.

Elected to the mastership, 1497.

Prosperity of Michael

house con

trasted with

of other foun

It may be reasonably inferred that Michaelhouse had throughout enjoyed the benefits of good government and the condition that its resources had been wisely administered, for not long dations. after the time that Fisher succeeded to the mastership we find that, with respect to revenue, it stood sixth in the list of college foundations. That Fisher himself was a conscientious administrator admits of little doubt; and at a time when the neighbouring hospital of St. John the Evangelist was sinking into decay under the reckless rule of William Tomlyn, until the very stones of the street were silent witnesses against him, and when the depredations of bishop Booth, as master of Gonville, were still fresh in the memory of the university, the members of Michaelhouse may well have congratulated themselves on the character of their head. On the other hand, we have nothing to indicate that Fisher was, at this time, an advocate of extensive reforms or of startling innovations. All in fact that we know about him would lead us to infer the contrary. He appears to have been generally recognised as a man of exemplary life, signal ability, extensive learning, and unusual disinterestedness; but he was now approaching his fortieth year; he had received his early education in a city and at a school pervaded by monastic influences, and his more advanced education in one of the most monastic and conservative of our English colleges; over that college he was now called to preside; it was natural that he should be

Character and views of Fisher at this period.

1 Lewis, Life of Fisher, 1 4.
2 Cooper, Annals, 1 370.

3 He was presented' at the Law
Hundred or Leet of the town in 1502,
for having the pavement in front of
the college broken and ruinous.' Ibid.
I 258.

4 Booth, bishop of Exeter, master of Gonville, 1465-78, was charged with having' most disgracefully made away with the best cup and the best piece of silver plate, together with as much money as he could scrape

together.' Riley's Second Report of the Royal Commission of Historical MSS.

5 At the survey of the colleges in 1545, conducted by Parker, Redman, and May, Michaelhouse and Queens' College (a foundation, it is to be borne in mind, that had also for some years the benefit of Fisher's administration) were the only two where the expenditure was not found considerably to exceed the revenue. See Cooper, Annals, 1 431-8.

PART II.

strongly disposed in favour of the traditions of its rule, CHAP. V. and there were probably few in the university who looked for much that was novel at the hands of the master of Michaelhouse. It will accordingly be of no little interest to note the manner in which a mind like this, tenacious of its convictions, yet candid and honest in investigating what was new, was gradually led to recognise the value of a culture in which it had not shared, and to enter upon the path of moderate but energetic reform.

at Cambridge

There is little reason for believing that if Fisher had failed to apply himself to the work, other reformers would have been forthcoming. Not that men of mark were wanting Eminent men at Cambridge at this time; on the contrary, we are struck at this time. by the fact that at no former period had the university been better able to sustain a comparison with Oxford. The spiteful exultation of Wood, as he points out that, at a somewhat later juncture, nearly all the bishops were from his own university', would have found considerably less cause for triumph in the list of the episcopal bench in the year 1500. Out of the twenty bishoprics into which England and Wales were then divided, nine were filled by Cam- Bishops. bridge men. Rotheram was archbishop of York; Savage, bishop of London; Alcock, bishop of Ely; Fox, bishop of Durham; Story, bishop of Chichester; King, bishop of Bath and Wells; Redman, bishop of Exeter; Jann and Deane (claimed, it is true, by both universities), were bishops of Norwich and Salisbury respectively. But though these, and not a few others, may be pointed out as men conferring honour upon their university, none of them, with the notable exception of Fox, seem to have been possessed by any new ideas with respect to learning. Rotheram, munificent as Rotheram. were his benefactions, was rather a promoter of it in others than learned himself. John Barker, 'the sophister of King's,' John Barke and author of the Scutum Inexpugnabile, was a much admired dialectician, but nothing more. William Chubbes, William the first who bore the title of president of Pembroke College, d. 1505. was the author of an Introduction to Logic and a Com

1 Wood-Gutch, 11 8.

Chubbes

CHAP. V.
PART II.

John

Argentine. d. 1508.

Act in the

Schools.

mentary on Duns Scotus; he was also afterwards the first master of Jesus College, and is said to have been the chief adviser of bishop Alcock in his design of that foundation'. John Argentine, provost of King's, and physician to the two sons of Henry VII, was also a dialectician of some repute. There is extant from his pen a series of verses on all the His proposed faculties (twelve in number), which he designed as subjects for his act,' as incepting master of arts in the year 1470. It appears, however, that the ambitious disputant subsequently discovered that it was indispensable that the subject for each disputation should be thrown into the form of a quæstio, and his elaborate preparation was consequently thrown away. The manuscript still remains in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford', and may be regarded as a good illustration of the scope of the dialectical practice Robert in the schools of those days. Hacomblene, the eighth provost of King's College, was known as the author of a commentary on the Ethics of Aristotle, but his text was the traditional text of the schoolmen, and his commentary continued to slumber in manuscript in the library of his college. Horneby, fellow of Michaelhouse, and afterwards master of Peterhouse, was distinguished as a high-minded and energetic administrator. But the limited views of these men and others like them are sufficiently shewn in the nature of the work they devised and carried out. The erection of versity, able the different schools, as narrated in a previous chapter3,the commencement in 1479 of the rebuilding of Great St.

Hacomblene. d. 1528.

Henry Horneby. d. 1518.

These, and

other eminent men

in the uni

workers

but not reformers.

1 Cooper, Athenæ, 1 10.

At the commencement of the poem is pasted a slip on which is written in a different hand,-Actus Mri Jo. Argentyn publice habitus in universitate Cantabrigiæ contra omnes Regentes hujus universitatis quoad oppositiones, A.D. 1470. (The year is erroneously given in Nichols's edition of Fuller, as 1407.) The following lines, in the same handwriting as the slip, seem to indicate the ambitious design of the young inceptor:-Neu sit turba Regens nostros tacitura per annos, Hinc canere est animo variis ludendo cicutis. | Dulcia plectra mihi tua porrige cantor Apollo | At Stil

bontis (Mercury) ope mea fistula personet apte. Sic mihi crinitus cytharam concedat Iopas | Threiciam ut Thelim (? Chelyn) Phebeus spondeat Orpheus. | Ac me si foveat caute leto ubere mater | Exigua ista suis modulabor carmina rivis | Et velit huc conferre pedem sacra turba Regentum | Utferat (? sciat) an motis sociem bene carmina nervis. I am indebted to the courtesy of the Rev. E. L. Hicks, M.A., librarian of the college, for the foregoing particulars, and also for two conjectural emendations of the Latin verse.

3 See supra, pp. 300-1.

PART II.

mena of the

inspiriting

Mary's (a task of forty years)',-and other minor improve- CHAP. V. ments of the kind,-did nothing to stimulate the intellectual life of the university. Nor can we deny that the national experiences of that age were not such as to encourage The phenosanguine sentiments or bold innovations. The early years age not of an of Englishmen of that generation had been darkened by character. many a tale of horror, and their maturer years saddened by the sense of exhaustion that came over the country when the long struggle was at an end. The flower of the nobility, now the chief patrons of learning, had fallen on the battlefield. In the more distant horizon the steady and ominous advance of the Turkish power, by land and by sea, was striking terror throughout Christendom. From the general dejection induced by such circumstances the university was not exempt. Somehow, I know not how,' said bishop Fisher, Fisher's dewhen in brighter days he looked back upon these times, the prevalent 'whether it were the continual strifes with the townsmen, university. and the wrongs they did us,-or the long abiding of the fever, that tried us with a cruelty above the ordinary, carrying off many of our learned men,-or that there were few or no helpers and patrons of letters,-whatever were the true cause, doubtless there had stolen over well nigh all of us a weariness of learning and study, so that not a few did take counsel in their own minds how that they might effect their departure so as it were not to their own hurt The circumstances of the time indeed were precisely of the kind wherein we should expect to meet with a revival of the

1 Or yet longer if we take Fuller's view of the matter:-The mention of St. Mary's mindeth me of churchwork indeed, so long it was from the founding to the finishing thereof; as begun May 16th, 1478, when the first stone thereof was laid in the 17th of Edward IV; the church ended (but without a tower or belfry) 1519, in the eleventh of Henry VIII. tower finished 1608, in the sixth of King James; so that from the begin. ning to the ending thereof were no fewer than an hundred and thirty years.' Fuller-Prickett & Wright, p. 180.

2

The

nescio quo infortunio, sive

continuis litibus et injuriis oppida-
norum (quibus eramus implicati),
sive diuturna plaga febrium, quibus
supra modum vexabamur, (nam ex
literatoribus complures amisimus, et
ex ipso doctorum numero decem
viros graves et valde eruditos), seu
tertio bonarum artium fautores et
benefactores pauci erant et prope
nulli. Sive his sive aliis occasioni-
bus, profecto literarum et studiorum
nos prope omnes tædium cepit: adeo
ut multi secum cogitarent, quorsum
hinc abirent commode.' Oratio ha-
bita coram illustrissimo rege Hen-
rico VII, Cantabrigiæ, A.D. 1506.
Lewis, Life of Fisher, App. vIII.

scription of

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