2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

TWO 19 TH CENTURY MASTERS I Jesus College Annual Report 2013 61
So the question arises: why, in 1850, at such
a critical juncture in the history of the
University and its colleges, did Bishop Turton
appoint Corrie? To it the Memorials do,
however, provide an answer. Turton, too, had
been a Fellow and Tutor of St Catharine’s, and
was another “shy, hypochondriac”, life-long
bachelor (though in his seventies he did fall
head over heels in love). 37 Corrie had been his
prize pupil, and having been elected a Fellow,
Turton at once appointed him his Assistant
Tutor. Subsequently Corrie succeeded Turton
as Tutor when the latter was elected Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics. Turton then
became Norrisian Professor, and when from
that poorly endowed chair he was appointed
Dean of Peterborough, Corrie succeeded him
in it. His former Tutor doubtless sympathised
with Corrie, as others did, in his
disappointment at not becoming Master of
St Catharine’s. 38 Then, in 1845, Turton, now
Dean of Westminster, was promoted to be
bishop of Ely and so, on French’s sudden
death, he was there to exercise the bishop’s
right to appoint a new Master of Jesus and, in
doing so, to assuage the disappointment of
his former pupil whom he had already made
both his Domestic and, despite the refusal to
take part in teaching ordinands, his
Examining Chaplain. By itself the Mastership
of Jesus was no great plum, 39 and after the
Cathedrals Act of 1840 the bishop was no
longer able to supplement a Master’s income
by giving him an Ely canonry, as his
predecessors had done for several Masters,
including French. But the bishop was not
wholly without resources. In 1851 “the
choicest living in his gift”, the parish of
Newton-in-the-Isle, became vacant. Turton
urged Corrie to accept it from him, and he
did. 40 Newton was much farther from
Cambridge than Ely – it “had been looked
upon as a place beyond the limits of
civilisation” 41 – yet, with a curate to look after
the parish when Corrie was back in College, it
seems to have suited him well and he
undertook, too, the duties of Rural Dean of
Wisbech: another ecclesiastical anomaly,
there being no archdeacon. 42 By the early
1860s, he had become as much or more
concerned in parochial and diocesan as in
College or University affairs, the latter being
for him by then a lost cause. There were no
pensions attached to University or college (or
church) appointments until after the first
world war and so most were, inevitably, for
life – however long the life.
It was not only in the exercise of episcopal
patronage that Turton was, like his former
pupil, a relic of the ancien regime. 43 During his
four years as Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics, with a salary of £300 p.a. (about
£21,000 in 2013 money), he, like his
predecessor Charles Babbage, had never
lectured. A notable art collector, he was, if not
the very last, one of the last bishops to wear
the episcopal wig when in a church. ‘Black’
Morgan had unhappy memories of going to
Ely to be ordained by him. The elderly bishop
had shown no personal interest in the
ordinands and the service itself seemed to be
just a formality that had to be gone through. 44
Gray had similarly dismal memories of Corrie:
his “religion was, I think, a thing for himself;
his sermons were the deadliest imaginable
and nobody heeded them . . . He always read
[them] and according to [his niece] never
preached the same one twice, which was a
waste of labour, as nobody would have known
that he had more than one sermon”. 45
Corrie’s longevity had, however, one
fortunate consequence. Three years before his
death at the age of 92 in 1885, Bishop
Woodford had surrendered his right to
appoint Masters of Jesus. His predecessor,
Bishop Browne, had declined to do so,
thinking it wrong to do anything that would
further reduce the links between the Church
and the Universities, it would be “destructive
to both but utterly disastrous to the
Universities”. 46 Under the College’s new
statutes that came into force in 1882 the
Master was to be elected by the Fellows, and
it was by their unanimous vote that ‘Black’
Morgan finally entered into his delayed
inheritance, becoming the thirty-first (and
last) cleric to be Master.
1 Sidney Smith in E.E.Rich (ed.) St Catharine’s College,
Cambridge – Quincentennary Essays (Cambridge 1972),
161-2, assesses Corrie’s Tutorship.
2 (London 1874); David McKitterick, Cambridge University
Library – A History, vol. II (Cambridge 1986) 689;
Cambridge Antiquarian Society Reports, I (1840) 1-15;
X (1860) 11-23; XI (1861) 73-78; M.E. Bury and J.D.