2012 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

50 CREATOR OF THE MODERN COLLEGE I Jesus College Annual Report 2012
– it was their first experience of formal
education – and from there, Henry, aged 16,
went to King’s College London, as stoutly
defended a bastion of Anglicanism as any
Oxbridge college. Its poorly regarded medical
school apart, it then functioned, essentially,
as a VIth Form college, with a scholarship
class for those intending to go on to
Cambridge or Oxford to get a degree and seek
ordination. (The other students went, degreeless,
straight into commerce, the professions
or the civil service.) The scholarship class was
notably successful: in the year that Morgan
took the Mathematical Tripos (1853) 13 out
of the 41 Wranglers (the First Class) had
come to Cambridge via KCL (he was the 26th
Wrangler), as had the top six Senior Optimes
(the Seconds), all of them having earlier
obtained the best of their colleges’
scholarships. 5 Among the KCL
contemporaries who came with Morgan to
Cambridge was his life-long friend Leslie
Stephen, the noted Alpinist, father of Virginia
Woolf and founding editor of the Dictionary of
National Biography, who (until he lost his
faith, resigning his Orders and his
fellowship) was to be as charismatic a Tutor
at Trinity Hall as Morgan was at Jesus.
Arriving in the Michaelmas term 1849, the
last of the graceful and respected Dr French’s
mastership, he found the College more or
less full, with 55 students, a third of them,
like him, clergymen’s sons, attracted by the
Rustat and related scholarships. The
restoration of the inner Chapel, guided by
Pugin, was receiving much admiring interest.
In the last hundred or so years most
Cambridge (and Oxford) colleges have, as a
result of the reforms made by the University
Commissions established under the Oxford
and Cambridge Universities Acts of 1877 and
1923, been much of a muchness. Each has,
of course, its own atmosphere and traditions,
and there are some variations (though less
than often thought) in academic reputation,
sporting prowess, and amenities. But, at
bottom, they all have similar academic aims
and policies; the same criteria – of open
competition on merit – are applied to the
admissions of students and elections to
fellowships; and in these smaller
communities they offer their members
comparable benefits within the larger
University. And the University not only
examines, but provides most of the teaching
and nearly all the facilities needed for
advanced study and research. One hundred
and sixty years ago, when Morgan came up, it
was all hugely different.
The University was then little more than an
examining and a police authority linking its
17 Colleges. It had only just acquired an art
gallery and museum, and its library was
struggling to cope with the increased flow of
printed books. Almost all the teaching was
done (at a lowly level) in the colleges or (to a
higher standard) by private tutors, “coaches”,
and the variations between colleges – where
their students came from (regionally and
socially) and the reasons which brought them
to Cambridge (not always to get a degree);
what scholarships and what other help they
offered them; their fees, charges and room
rents; and from whom and by what means
they selected their fellows (all of whom had,
however, to be Anglicans) – were enormous.
Some colleges, notably Trinity and
Emmanuel, chose their fellows by
examination, some only from among their
own scholars, some on the basis of Tripos
performance and general reputation, some
regularly, others when there were casual
vacancies to be filled; and the length and
condition of tenure varied too. Only a small
minority of the fellows were involved in
teaching, and fewer still in advanced study
and research, or were even resident. For the
non-resident, a fellowship was little more
than an annuity payable from a college’s
surplus income. And colleges varied vastly in
size and financial resources. More than half
of all the students in Cambridge belonged to
just two: Trinity and St John’s, which, with
comparably large bodies of resident fellows,
called most of the University’s tunes.
Jesus if, in its own terms, prospering in
1849, was nonetheless one of the smaller and
poorer colleges: in both 1850 and 1851 there
would be deficits. So its sixteen fellowships
were not worth much (and in some years
nothing beyond free board and lodging).
They were, in theory, open to all (male)
British subjects who were members of the
United Church of England and Ireland and