John Fell (bishop)
John Fell (23 June 1625 – 10 July 1686) was an English churchman and influential academic. He served as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford,[1][2] and later concomitantly as Bishop of Oxford.
Education
Fell was born at
1649).English Civil War
During the Civil War he bore arms for King Charles I of England and held a commission as ensign. In 1648 he was deprived of his studentship by the parliamentary visitors, and during the next few years he resided chiefly at Oxford with his brother-in-law, Thomas Willis, at whose house opposite Merton College he and his friends Richard Allestree and John Dolben maintained an Anglican presence in Oxford throughout the Commonwealth.[3]
Career
After the
Fell showed himself a capable administrator. He restored good order in the university by the archbishop, which during
He made many converts from the
Discipline
He was a disciplinarian, and possessed a talent for the education of young men, many of whom he received into his own family.
:Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere – quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non-amo te.
To which he immediately replied with the well-known lines:
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr Fell.
Delinquents were not always treated thus mildly by Fell, and
Building operations
Fell's building operations were ambitious. In his own college he completed in 1665 the north side of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's great quadrangle, already begun by his father but abandoned during the Commonwealth; in 1672, he rebuilt the east side of the Chaplain's quadrangle "with a straight passage under it leading from the cloister into the field," occupied now by the new Meadow Buildings; the lodgings of the canon of the third stall in the passage uniting the Tom Quad and Peckwater Quadrangle (c.1674); a long building joining the Chaplain's quadrangle on the east side in 1677–1678; and lastly the great Tom Tower gate, begun in June 1681 on the foundation laid by Wolsey and finished in November 1682, to which the bell "great Tom," after being recast, was transferred from the cathedral in 1683. In 1670 he planted and laid out the Broad Walk.
He spent large sums of his own on these works, gave £500 for the restoration of
Oxford University Press
In the theatre was placed the
Writings
Many works, including a Bible, editions of the classics and of the early fathers, were produced under Fell's direction and editing. He published annually one work, generally a classical author annotated by himself, which he distributed to all the students of his college on New Year's Day. On one occasion he surprised the Press in surreptitiously printing Pietro Aretino's Postures, and he seized and destroyed the plates and impressions. Ever "an eager defender and maintainer of the university and its privileges," he was hostile to the Royal Society, which he regarded as a possible rival, and in 1686 he gave an absolute refusal to Obadiah Walker, afterwards the Roman Catholic master of University College, though licensed by James II, to print books, declaring he would as soon "part with his bed from under him" as his press. He conducted it on strict business principles, and to the criticism that more great works were not produced replied that they would not sell. He was, however, not free from fads, and his new spelling (of which one feature was the substitution of i for y in such words as cies, daies, maiest) met with great disapproval.
Fell also wrote lives of his friends
Linguist and translator
He had a high reputation as a Grecian, a Latinist and a
Mission to India
Occasionally imprudent in his schemes, he was the originator of a mission to
Controversy
Having undertaken at his own charge to publish a Latin version of Wood's History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, with the object of presenting the history of the university in a manner worthy of the great subject to European readers, and of extending its fame abroad, he arrogated to himself the right of editing the work. "He would correct, alter, dash out what he pleased... He was a great man and carried all things at his pleasure." In particular he struck out all the passages which Wood had inserted in praise of Thomas Hobbes, and substituted some disparaging epithets. He called Leviathan "monstrosissimus" and "publico damno notissimus." To the printed remonstrance of Hobbes, Fell inserted an insulting reply in the History to "irritabile illud et vanissimum Malmesburiense animal," and to the complaint of Wood at this usage answered only that Hobbes "was an old man, had one foot in the grave; that he should mind his latter end, and not trouble the world any more with his papers." In small things as in great he loved to rule and direct. "Let not Fell," writes R. South to Ralph Bathurst, "have the fingering and altering of them, for I think that, barring the want of siquidems and quinetiams, they are as good as his Worship can make." Wood styled him "a valde vult person."
Not content with ruling his own college, he desired to govern the whole university. He prevented
In November 1684, at the command of King
Death
Fell, who had never married, died "worn out", according to Wood, at the age of 61. He was buried in the divinity chapel in the cathedral, below the seat which he had so often occupied when living, where a monument and an epitaph, now moved elsewhere, were placed to his memory. "His death," writes John Evelyn, "was an extraordinary losse to the poore church at this time". With all his faults Fell was a great man, "the greatest governor," estimated Speaker Onslow, "that has ever been since his time in either of the universities," and of his own college, to which he left several exhibitions for the maintenance of poor scholars, he was a second founder.
A sum of money was left by John Cross to perpetuate Fell's memory by an annual speech in his praise, but the Felii laudes were discontinued in 1866. There are two interesting pictures of Fell at Christ Church, one where he is represented with his two friends Allestree and Dolben, and another by Anthony van Dyck. The statue placed on the northeast angle of the Great Quadrangle bears no likeness to the bishop, who is described by Hearne as a "thin grave man."
See also
References
- ^ Salter, H. E.; Lobel, Mary D., eds. (1954). "Christ Church". A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3: The University of Oxford. Victoria County History. pp. 228–238. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
- ^ Horn, Joyce M., ed. (1996). "Deans of Christ Church, Oxford". Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541–1857: volume 8: Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough dioceses. Institute of Historical Research. pp. 80–83. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
- ISBN 9781874317036.
- ^ "Previous Vice-Chancellors". University of Oxford, UK. Archived from the original on 19 April 2014. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
Sources
- Salter, H. E.; Lobel, Mary D. (1954). "Christ Church: A History of the County of Oxford". Victoria County History. 3: The University of Oxford.
- Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses and Fasti (ed. Bliss)
- Antony a Wood, Life and Times, ed. by A. Clark
- Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. 1833
- J. Welch, Alumni Westmonasterienses