You Are to Pray and Fight, Not to Drink for the Church
Mr. Jones, of Welwyn, relates, on the authority of Old Mr. Bunburry, of Brazen-nose College, that Bishop Kennett, when a young man, being one of the Oxford Pro-Proctors, and a very active one, about James the Second’s reign, going his rounds one evening, found a company of gownsmen engaged on a drinking bout, to whom his then high church principles were notorious (though he afterwards changed them, sided with Bishop Hoadley, and obtained the soubriquet of weather-cock Kennett.) When he entered the room, he reprimanded them for keeping such late hours, especially over the bottle, rather than over their studies in their respective colleges, and ordered them to disperse. One in the company, who knew his political turn, addressed him with, “Mr. Proctor, you will, I am sure, excuse us when I say, we were met to drink prosperity to the church, to which you can have no objection.” “Sir,” was his answer, with a solemn air, “we are to pray for the church, and to fight for the church, not to drink for the church.” Upon which the company paid their reckoning and dispersed. There is a curious print in the Library of the Antiquarians, of an altar-piece, which the rector of Whitechapel, Dr. Walton, caused to be painted and put up in his church, representing Christ and his twelve apostles eating the passover, wherein Bishop Kennett (the “Traitor Dean,” as his siding with Hoadley caused him to be designated) is painted as Judas.
SIGNS OF A GOOD APPETITE
When a late master of Richmond School, Yorkshire, came, a raw lad in his teens, to matriculate at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was invited to dinner by his tutor, and happened to be seated opposite some boiled fowls, which, having just emptied a plate of his quantum of fish, he was requested to carve. He accordingly took one on his plate, but not being a carver, he leisurely ate the whole of it, minus the bones, not at all disconcerted by the smiles of the other guests: and when the cheese appeared, and his host cut a plateful for him to pass round the table, he coolly set to and eat the whole himself. He, notwithstanding, proved a good scholar, and distinguished himself both in classics and mathematics, is now a canon residentiary of St. Paul’s, and a very worthy divine, who has earned his reputation, preferments, and dignities by his merits only.
A COLLEGE QUIZ
The following effusion of humour was the production of a very pleasant fellow, an Oxford scholar, now no more, who, says Angelo, in his Reminiscences, “was a great favourite among his brother collegians,” and a humourist:—“Lost £10 this morning, May 15, 1808, in Peckwater Quadrangle, near No. 6. Any nobleman, gentleman, common student, or commoner, who will, as soon as possible, bring the same back to the afflicted loser, shall, with pleasure, receive ten guineas reward; a suitor shall receive five guineas; and a scout or porter, one guinea. The notes were all Bank of England notes, I only received this morning from my father. My name is ——, and I lodge at ——, facing Tom Gate, where I am anxiously waiting for some kind friend to bring them to me.—Vivant Rex et Regina.”
SUCKING THE MILK OF BOTH UNIVERSITIES
Is an epithet applied to those members who, after graduating at one proceeds to a like degree at the other. A party one day disputing as to whether Oxford or Cambridge was the more distinguished seat of learning,—“It can’t affect me,” exclaimed one of them, “for I was educated at both.” Upon which a wag observed, “He reminded him of a calf that was suckled by two cows.” “How so?” said the other. “Why, it turned out the greatest calf I ever knew,” was the retort.
Amongst the musical professors of Cambridge, and not the least, who was organist of King’s College also, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was Dr. Thomas Tudway. He was a notorious wag, and when several of the members of the University of Cambridge expressed their discontent at the paucity of the patronage, and the rigour of the government of the “proud Duke of Somerset,” whose statue graces their senate house, he facetiously observed—
“The Chancellor rides us all without a bit in our mouths.”