Winchester College Publication Winchester College Classic Talks | Page 4

Benjamin Jowett, were
also heads of colleges,
respectively Christ Church
and Balliol: such doubling up
has always been very rare in
Oxford, though it happens
quite often in Cambridge.
Understandably, the Greek
professor felt rather miffed.
The Prime Minister of the
day wrote to ask Christ
Church to raise the stipend;
the Dean of Christ Church,
the redoubtable Henry
Liddell (father of Alice),
wrote back robustly to
suggest that in that case
the crown might consider
transferring
the
lands
that were supposed to be
supporting the chair. Henry,
it seems, had never quite got
around to doing so.
The affair rumbled on for
some time. The professor in
question,
Benjamin Jowett
Figure 5 Benjamin Jowett; by Sir Leslie Ward
(Figure 5), was a controversial
figure. Many feathers had been ruffled by his writings on the Epistles of St
Paul, and still more by his book On the Interpretation of Scripture (1860).
This had argued that it was important to view the holy writings in the
cultural context of their own time, and that it was important for each
generation to interpret them anew. That may not seem too outlandish today,
but it was very radical for its day: there was even a move to bring Jowett
before the Vice-Chancellor’s court for heresy. Christ Church was not at all
keen on rewarding someone like that. The question of the stipend was
referred to the university, and there was a proposal to raise it to £500. This
was to be decided by a vote of Convocation – not the assembled dons
working within Oxford itself, but all MAs of the university. The day came for
the vote, the carriages rattled into town carrying vicar after vicar; one can
guess which way they were likely to vote. The stipend remained at £40,
and Jowett was dependent on his Balliol fellowship, then later the
Mastership, for his livelihood. That was not as great a hardship as it may
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seem, as Heads of House might earn as much as £1,500; and Jowett became
Vice-Chancellor too, chairing the very court that might a few years earlier
have been condemning him.
To put your minds at rest – the stipend has now been increased.
What of the role of the crown in making the appointment? That survives, in
an attenuated form, though perhaps not as attenuated (or at least not as
recently attenuated) as one might expect. The monarch himself or herself
was doubtless involved at the beginning, and Elizabeth I in particular would
have concerned herself with the choice, just as she did with the Wardenship
of Winchester College (regarded at the time, incidentally, as itself one of the
colleges of Oxford University). At the beginning of the eighteenth century
it is said that Queen Anne was so impressed with a certain Edward Thwaytes
that she appointed him out of hand, though his real expertise was in
Anglo-Saxon: what had impressed her, though, was his stoicism under the
knife when his leg was being amputated at the knee. (I am not vouching for
this story as strictly true.) In the early nineteenth century it was the Prime
Minister who wrote to offer the chair to Dean Gaisford, as we shall later see;
it is possible that he was simply doing the Prince Regent’s bidding, but it is
more likely that by then the responsibility had passed to Downing Street.
That remained the case until well into the twentieth century. When Gilbert
Murray was about to retire in 1936, he noted with some concern that
nothing had been done about appointing a successor, and wrote to the Prime
Minister, Stanley Baldwin, about it. Baldwin admittedly had rather a lot on
his plate in that momentous year, and simply wrote back to ask for Murray’s
advice. Murray duly gave it; a brilliant appointment was made, but a very
controversial one within Oxford itself. More on this later too.
My own appointment was the first where there were actual interviews for
the chair, with the Appointments Secretary as one of the panel; up till then
the normal practice had been for ‘soundings’ to be taken, and for a letter
then to be sent out of the blue to a favoured candidate. But even in my time
the process was not described in terms as ordinary as ‘application’ or
‘interview’ or even ‘appointing committee’: I was invited ‘to discuss my
interest in the vacancy’ with ‘the advisory board’. The involvement of the
Prime Minister himself or herself has varied according to the PM of the day.
Tony Blair was rather busy in 2003 invading Iraq, but I do have my letter of
appointment signed by him, and also a rather impressive set of ‘Letters
Patent’. Earlier, Harold Macmillan was said to be more interested in such
crown appointments than anything else in his red boxes; Margaret Thatcher
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