2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

56 TWO 19 TH CENTURY MASTERS I Jesus College Annual Report 2013
Dr French and Dr Corrie – A Study in
Contrasts
Peter Glazebrook
Two masterships that spanned 65 years of the 19th century
For two thirds of the nineteenth century –
1820 to 1885 – there were only two
Masters of Jesus. William French was
appointed, aged 34, in 1820 by Bishop
Sparke; George Elwes Corrie, aged 57, in
1850 by Bishop Turton. Both had been
Fellows in other colleges, and both had
become Tutors, French at Pembroke, Corrie
at St Catharine’s. 1 Both were personal friends
of the bishop who appointed them and both
were – unlike their immediate predecessors
or Corrie’s successor – serious scholars.
French was a Hebraist, publishing new texts
and translations of the Book of Proverbs (1831)
and of the Psalms (1830; new edition 1842).
Corrie was a church historian, and mediaeval
bibliographer and book-collector, who
published painstaking editions of
foundational works of the English
Reformation and (at the age of 81) A Concise
History of the Church and State of England in the
Reign of Henry VIII (1874). 2 But here the
similarities end.
French had been Second Wrangler (second
in the order of merit in the First Class of the
Mathematical Tripos), and a Smith’s
Prizeman and, as a young graduate, tutor to
Bishop Sparke’s children; Corrie had been
18th Wrangler (out of 18). French was happily
married to the daughter of the vicar of his
home town of Eye in Suffolk; they had two
daughters (a son-in-law was, albeit a Trinity
man, to be a benefactor of the College).
Corrie remained a bachelor, two longsuffering
but devoted nieces keeping house
for him in the Lodge and at the Rectory at
Newton-in-the-Isle in the north
Cambridgeshire fens. French was twice Vice-
Chancellor, a good host, 3 a gracious and
charming public speaker 4 who was widely
respected in the University as a judicious –
that is, a cautious – reformer. He took a
leading part in the campaigns for the election
William French
of a High Steward and a Chancellor known to
be sympathetic to University reform: Lord
Lyndhurst in 1840, the Prince Consort in
1847. 5 He had supported the introduction of
an optional examination in Classics that
might be taken by those who had already
obtained Honours in Mathematics – the
origin of the Classics Tripos – and he
favoured the introduction of Natural and
Moral Sciences Triposes, though he did not
live to see them brought into existence. 6 He
initiated, once the Crown’s Law Officers had
agreed on the appropriate legal machinery, a
mild revision of the College’s statutes which
had remained unchanged since the sixteenth
century. He had earlier secured the Bishop’s
and the Privy Council’s approval for the
repeal of the statute requiring the