A HISTORY MANCHESTER COLLEGE A HISTORY OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE FROM ITS FOUNDATION IN MANCHESTER TO ITS ESTABLISHMENT IN OXFORD 4.Y V. D. DAVIS, B.A. LONDON GEORGE ALLEN 6' UNWIN LTD MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD Entrance under the Tower MUSEUM STREET FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1932 k?. -< C-? . PREFACE k THISrecord of the history of Manchester College has been - prepared at the instance of the College Committee, and is E published on their responsibility and at their sole cost. It is based upon ample material provided by the long series :' of annual reports and the seventeen large folio volumes Y- F'$2 of the minutes of the Committee, and further volumes of collected College documents, together with two volumes of the minutes of the Warrington Academy. Much information . of historical value has been gathered from the published addresses of Principals and other members of the Teaching Staff, and the Visitors. The record is also greatly indebted to Dr. Drummond's Life aad Letters of james A4artineau, and other memoirs of College teachers and distinguished students, to which reference will be found in the notes. a It has been a great privilege to an old student of the College, whose father also was a student both at York and Manchester, to be allowed to undertake this work, in which he received encouragement and invaluable help from two other elder friends and old students, Dr. Edwin Odgers and Alexander Gordon. To their memory, as to that of his own revered and beloved teachers in the College, Martineau, Drummond, Upton, Carpenter, he would have desired, had it been worthy, humbly and gratefully to dedicate his work. V. D. D. All rights reserved PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY UNWIN BROTHERS LTD., WOKING CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE 7 PART I EARLIER ACADEMIES I. THE FORE-RUNNERS 11. THE FIRST ACADEMY 111. FROM RATHMEL TO WARRINGTON IV, WARRINGTON ACADEMY THE PROSPEROUS YEARS THE CLOSING YEARS PART I1 MANCHESTER COLLEGE V. THE FIRST MANCHESTER PERIOD 3 VI, MANCHESTER COLLEGE, YORK 7 I VII, THE SECOND MANCHESTER PERIOD IOj VIII. MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE, LONDON 13~ IX. MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD IGS APPENDIX NOTE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COLLEGE 203 LISTS OF OFFICERS OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE 207 INDEX 211 ILLU STRATION S PLATE I. MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD Frontispiece ENTRANCE UNDER THE TOWER FACING PAGE 11. THE MARTINEAU STATUE IN THE COLLEGE 152 LIBRARY 111. MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD 168 FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. THE CHAPEL IN THE FOREGROUND IV. MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD Ig2 FROM THE NORTH-EAST. THE LIBRARY IN THE FOREGROUND The three illustrations of the College Bt/i/dit2g~are-from photograph.r & Mr. Norman Tgdor, 107, High Street, Oxford. PART I EARLIER ACADEMIES CHAPTER I THE FORE-RUNNERS i$ OVERthe entrance to the buildings of Manchester College : &g at Oxford the inscription stands "To Truth, to Liberty, to Religion." The buildings were opened in October, 1893, g4 - four years after the College had been brought from London <-..g 90 ii to Oxford, to the temporary shelter of No. High Street. b, Other migrations had marked its history, for it was then more than a hundred years old, and it had been moved from - place to place as circumstance required, intent always on securing the fullest opportunity for the service to which it ' was devoted. The words of dedication, now inscribed in stone at Oxford, were used at the foundation of the College in Manchester in 1786, by Dr. Thomas Barnes, the first Divinity tutor, in his opening address; and for more than - another hundred years, from the earliest days of the ejected Nonconformists of 1662, the ideal of service in the cause of religion and learning, for which the Barnes inscription stands as watchword, had been maintained. - Manchester College, or the Manchester Academy, as it was first called, was indeed a new foundation, but it stands in the line of a brave succession. Rightly to appreciate its history, and the part it has played in the life of the nation, e must remember also the fore-runners, who first kindled d handed on the torch of religious freedom and loyalty truth, in face of the persecuting Acts of the Restoration 1670 is the year from which we may definitely date the eginning of the undertaking, as an act of determined faith, out of which in due course Manchester College had its birth. It was the year of the second Conventicle Act, which aimed at completing the work of the ill-omened Act of THE FORE-RUNNERS A HISTORY OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE i is now estimated, were deprived by the Act which came Uniformity of 1662, and the calculated cruelty of the subse- into force on that "one rigorous day" of St. Bartholomew, quent Conventicle and Five-Mile Acts ; but it was the year 1662, of whom Wordsworth wrote in his sonnet on "Clerical also of another event of very different character and far Integrity," happier promise for the future of religion and the welfare of the people. This was noted by Alexander Gordon, in "As men the dictate of whose inward sense his masterly historical address at the Centenary meeting of Outweighs the world." Manchester College in February, 1886. It was a striking No compromise of self-interest could tempt them. Driven coincidence that at the very time when Parliament was from church and school and college, homeless many of moving for a stricter enforcement of the laws and for a them and in dire poverty, they refused to be silenced, and new law of greater severity against Dissenters, Richard they could not be destroyed. The claim of religion with Frankland, one of the ejected clergy, opened an Academy them was paramount. No authority of the world could at Rathmel, in the Craven district of Yorkshire, and thus stand between them and the sacred obligation to maintain established the first of a line of Nonconformist schools of a faithful ministry. In spite of harrying and imprisonment "University learning," in which Manchester College stands they continued to preach as they could, and minister to sixth in the succession. The significance of this quiet but the people who looked to them for the bread of life. It is a very effectual protest against the persecuting laws was striking testimony to the spirit of undaunted courage and marked by Gordon in a pointed sentence: "The powers consecration which animated them, that so many of the that were in Church and State said, 'Nonconformity shall sons of ejected ministers were ready to devote themselves die.' Richard Frankland took a step which meant, 'Non- to a service in which their fathers had suffered, and were conformity shall live.' " suffering, such grievous things. The leaders of the dominant party, triumphant and The protest was decisive, not only in the matter of an embittered by memories of what they had suffered at ' unshackled ministry, but no less for the liberty of teaching. the hands of Presbyterians and Independents under the Shut out from Grammar School and University by the Commonwealth, were determined to crush out their enforcement of a yoke to which they could not submit, they opponents and all sectaries, enforcing episcopal rule in determined nevertheless that their children should be fitly the Church, and a universal adoption of the Prayer Book taught, and that for the maintenance of an adequate suc- liturgy. To that end, it was not only the clergy as preachers 1 '' cession in the ministry their young men should not be who were attacked, but all university and school teachers, . deprived of the learning rightly regarded as essential to a on whom the same demand of conformity, under heavy thorough equipment for their calling. Out of that necessity penalties, was made. The calculation was that if the supply arose the Nonconformist Academy. Many of the ejected of heresy could be cut off at the source, the pernicious ministers, in those first years of suffering, in defiance of the growth would very soon be destroyed. But the policy so law, undertook the task of teaching. In the houses of framed had not reckoned with the force of conscience and friends who gave them shelter, or, if they were men of readiness for sacrifice in the men who were to be coerced. : More than the traditional Two Thousand of the clergy, it means, in their own houses, as in Frankland's case, they B THE FORE-RUNNERS 9 A HISTORY OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE = received pupils and began to establish schools. Some of the which those in our line of succession belong to what earliest Academies may not have been more than Grammar came to be known as the Presbyterian body, as distinguished Schools in the standard of the education given, but others, from the Congregational. The difference was not in the from which young men went out into the professions of matter of Church polity, as the two names would seem to law and medicine, and to the ministry of religion, were imply, for the English Presbyterians since the Restoration distinctly of a higher grade, not unworthy to rank, in the had not retained anything approaching to their distinc- quality of their teaching, with the national Universities. j tive organization under the Commonwealth. As "United Such, undoubtedly, was the character of Frankland's 1 Brethrenwafter the passing of the Toleration Act of 1689, Academy at Rathmel, and of its successors down the line 1! Presbyterian and Congregational had made common cause, to Manchester College. It was, as Gordon said in his cen- i and though the union was not of long duration, and the tenary address, not merely academy after academy, but / Congregationals subsequently established a separate Fund "academy out of academy." Each in turn produced the 1 of their own for denominational support, both bodies man who was to carry on the work after his teacher had laid i remained practically lndependent in their Church order.