OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE ARMS: Martlets

L to R: Your blogger (Trinity, Oxon.) and Cheryl-Lisa Hearne-
McGuiness, Hon. Sec. of the Oxford University Society's London
Branch. Photo by branding expert Paul C. Walton (BNC, Oxon.).

Oxford, U.K., Wednesday, April 18, 2018 – Yesterday, and the day before, Alice and I stayed at the fine Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.

On Monday I spoke there to 70 members of the Oxford University Society, London Branch, about the 38 coats of arms of the Oxford colleges and the six coats of the Permanent Private Halls.

On Tuesday I was speaker at a "Discussion Supper" of the Oxford and Cambridge Club and I added in most of the 31 Cambridge colleges.

My objective was to make the college coats of arms more accessible to students, alumni, tourists and anyone else curious about Oxford and Cambridge.

Dropping the usual baggage of lists of tinctures, furs, metals, ordinaries, subordinaries and so forth, I also skipped past explanation of the history of coats of arms, how they were brought over by the Normans with William the Conqueror and became widespread through the growth of tournaments among the knights in the 12th century, etc.

Instead, I dove right in to the Oxford (and Cambridge) coats of arms by selecting two or more college shields at a time that have a device in common, such as a form of cross or a species of bird (big or small), and focusing on the meaning of the device and of significant differences.

I used each set of shields as a prompt to tell stories about how the devices relate to the history of the colleges, and inevitably the history of England. Along the way I slipped in a few comments about relevant heraldic conventions.

To illustrate my approach, consider a little footless bird on the arms of three colleges and one permanent private hall – three of them at Oxford and one at Cambridge.

The bird is the MARTLET, which is important in heraldry because it is a brisure, a mark of cadency on a coat of arms indicating that it is being carried by a fourth son of the owner of the arms. The discussion below is amplified, and a few references added, from my remarks yesterday.

The perfect venue was the Oxford and Cambridge 

Club room named after Queen Victoria's grand-

daughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-

Holstein, Germany's northernmost state.

University College's shield shows four (on its website) or often five golden martlets around a cross on a blue (azure) field. The St Benet's shield includes an almost identical coat of arms on its top right (the sinister side in chief). The difference between the two crosses (Univ's is a cross patonce, while St Benet's is a cross fleury) is not significant, as both crosses have been used interchangeably in the posthumously attributed arms of Edward the Confessor. Edward was of course the last of the great Anglo-Saxon kings, whose death in 1066 precipitated a nine-month succession battle that culminated in the death of Harold Godwinson and victory of William, Duke of Normandy at Hastings. With the accession of William I, Norman nobles arrived with their knights and heraldry. Univ has claimed the arms attributed to Edward the Confessor, although the founding in 1249 was by William of Durham, long after Edward the Confessor. As the Univ website explains, "a legend grew up in the 1380s that we were actually founded even earlier, by King Alfred in 872, and, understandably enough, this became widely accepted as the truth." (The Univ martlets are a possible origin of the four martlets in the St Peter's College coat of arms.)

St Benet’s Hall seems to have more claim to the arms of Edward the Confessor than Univ because the Hall is a foundation of Ampleforth College [full disclosure: I was a pupil there in 1952-55], which was created by the same English Benedictines who occupied Westminster Abbey at its inception. When Edward the Confessor built the original Benedictine Abbey and Church, he decided that English monarchs should be crowned there [all but two subsequent monarchs have been]. The other half of the top of the shield (the chief) shows the imputed coat of arms of St Peter, to whom Westminster Abbey is dedicated; the bottom of the shield is from the original Abbey. Henry III built the Gothic Abbey Church in honor of Edward, who by then had been canonized.

Pembroke College, Cambridge is the owner of the third shield. The five red (gules) martlets look dissimilar from the martlets in the previous two shields, but they are meant to be the same bird, in that they have no feet. Pembroke was founded by Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a man of importance in the reigns of Edwards I and II. The left side (dexter to the bearer) of the shield is half of his arms, which are split (impaled or dimidiated) with his wife Mary de St Pol, who came from Brittany.

Worcester College, represented by the fourth shield, has two chevrons and six martlets, which are blazoned as black (sable) or sometimes red (gules). The coat of arms is that of Sir Thomas Cookes [someone at the meeting at the Oxford and Cambridge Club said it should be Crookes, but he was being funny, I think], a Worcestershire baronet, whose bequest of £10,000 back in 1698, when a pound sterling was really worth something, founded the college. The Worcester College shield is almost always shown, as here, with black (sable) martlets, but the blazon often calls for red (gules) as in the Pembroke arms. [Sir Thomas also founded Bromsgrove School, which uses the arms with red (gules) martlets, corresponding to its blazon.] 

MEANING: So what does the martlet signify? All sources I have consulted agree that the lack of feet means that they can't land, so they are always aloft. This suggests that the martlets are always searching and is a good symbol for the search for knowledge. A lovely idea – although when you think about it, it makes the intellectual life sound tiring. (Tiring, but surely not as discouraging as the fates of Sisyphus or Tantalus.)

Another interpretation is that the martlet is a symbol of the self-made man, someone without foundation. But to impute such arms to a King like Edward the Confessor would hardly be appropriate with that interpretation, unless one was imputing modesty.

Links to Further Reading: Use of Star-Like Devices in the Oxford Colleges . Creation of Arms in the Newer Colleges at Oxford (Oxford Today, Michaelmas 2015)

Set of 46 Newly Design Coats of Arms: Oxford City and Oxford University coats of arms, 38 colleges, and six Permanent Private Halls. Below is a low-resolution version of an original set of shields drawn for me by heraldic artist Lee Lumbley. I plan to be at the 2018 BookExpo America at the Javits Center in New York City, May 31-June 2 and will be looking for appointments to talk with publishers at this event. My email address is teppermarlin at aol dot com.

SUMMER EIGHTS: May 20-28, 2016 (Updated August 26, 2018)

Head of the River Pub (next to the Folly Bridge) –
a good place to observe the rowing scene.
All photos by JT Marlin.

The 2016 Summer Eights begin with trials starting May 20 and are followed by the Head of the River races, May 25-28. 

They bring out some 170 boats and 1,500 participants. 

At one time, the Summer Eights races took six full days.

The boats compete to be in first place, i.e., Head of the River. 

Brigid Marlin, artist, at Folly Bridge. She is the
 sister of two Oxonians (Randal and me), mother
 of a third (Chris), aunt of two others (Christine
and Kate). Photo by JT Marlin.

They compete in single file because the Thames–a.k.a. the Isis in the Oxford segment above Iffley Lock, can't accommodate very many boats abreast.

A boat advances one place in the long line by "bumping" the boat ahead. Colleges have "bump" suppers after the event to celebrate their advancement(s).

The event, sponsored by Neptune Investment Management, has its own website.

History of Summer VIIIs

Is your Oxford college blade
On this clever clock arrayed?
Is one of them your very own,
Of 36 blades that here are shown?

Recreational rowing at Oxford was under way in 1769. Students then used single wherries, which were designed for choppy seas and have keels and higher sides than than today's flat-bottomed single sculls.


For Isis use, the gunnels were lowered and then the keel was eliminated. A history of competitive-rowing boat design is here.

The first boat-racing clubs at Oxford were organized in 1815, when Brasenose and Jesus Colleges competed for Head of the River in eights, giving the event its name. 

Exeter claims to have been the fourth entrant and that seems to fit with available historical record.

Guide to markings of Oxford college oars.

The "eights" of course have eight oars but nine on board. 

The cox is the extra person in the back who steers and shouts the rowing rhythm. 

Since the cox is baggage, he (or she)  is preferably smaller than the others in the boat.

The cox needs good timing, a big voice, sharp eyes and cough drops.

Christ Church added itself as a competitor in 1817. Seven years on, when Exeter went Head of the River, the crews agreed not to bring in rowers from other colleges. This generated five new college boats – the fifth boat being Worcester in 1824 or 1825, Balliol and Univ (6th and 7th) in 1827, and Oriel and Trinity (8th and 9th) in 1828.

Location of the Boathouses

A visiting Cantabridgian has written a frank tour guide of the Oxford boathouses and he is mostly impressed.

A map of the locations of the boathouses is provided below. The links to the boat clubs don't work because this is a screen shot, but I have included after the screen shot some links that work. The Folly Bridge notations show Salter's and the Head of the River Public House, but are missing the new Folly Bridge restaurant and the attached boathouse that provides boats to visitors.

University and College Boat Club Websites 

Oxford University Boat Club . Oxford University Women's Boat Club
Oxford University Lightweight Rowing Club
Oxford University Women's Lightweight Rowing Club

Balliol
Brasenose
Christ Church
Corpus Christi
Exeter
Green Templeton
Hertford
Jesus
Keble

Lady Margaret Hall
Linacre
Lincoln
Magdalen
Mansfield
Merton
New
Oriel
Osler House (Med students)
Pembroke
Queen's
Regent's Park
Somerville
St Anne's
St Antony's
St Benet's
St Catherine's
St Edmund Hall

St Hilda's
St Hugh's
St John's
St Peter's
Trinity
University
Wadham
Wolfson
Worcester

Other Rowing Posts: Rowing Blazers . 2012 NYC Boat Race Dinner . Punting . Head of Charles . 2017 Summer Eights

HERALDRY: Regent's Park College, an Oxford PPH

Shield of Regent's Park
College, a Permanent
Private Hall (PPH).

Blazon: Argent on a cross gules an open Bible proper irradiated or the pages inscribed with the words DOMINUS JESUS in letters sable on a chief wavy azure fish or.

Authority: The arms appear to be of no authority and are therefore unofficial. They appear to date to 1927, when the College moved to Oxford.

Full Achievement: The arms have a motto – Omnia probate quod bonus tenet. This is from St. Paul's First Epistle to the Thessalonians 5:21 and is translated: "Test all things; hold fast to that which is good." The achievement includes a crest that appears to be the facade of a building where the college was located in London.

Meaning:  The cross of St George identifies the institution as English.  The Bible and the fish (as symbol of Jesus, from the Greek word for fish ΙΧΘΥΣ, ICHTHUS – an acronym for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ, Jesus Christ Son of God Savior – identify the institution as Christian. The wavy blue water line in chief suggests the Baptist Church.

Full achievement of the coat of
 arms. The building in the
crest is unidentified.

Institutional History: The Regent’s Park College web site includes a link to the official College site. The College describes itself as having originated as  "an Education Society", called the Baptist Education Society in 1752. In 1810 it evolved into the Stepney Academy in East London. As it pioneered in assisting Baptist students in applying to Oxford, the number of Baptist-affiliated students at Oxford grew nearly nine-fold, from three in 1827 to 26 in 1850. In 1856 it moved seven miles across London to Regent’s Park, and adopted the name of the Park that it still carries. 

Intellectual and Religious History: The College's original mission was to provide a place to study for Nonconformists, followers of religions other than the Church of England. It offered a University-level education in the Arts and Law and trained future Baptist clergy as well as people like classical scholar W. H. D. Rouse. In 1841, Regent’s Park College was affiliated with the newly formed University of London. In 1927, the College moved to its third, current, site in Oxford. In 1957 it became a Permanent Private Hall (PPH) of the University of Oxford.

Other Posts on the Arms of Oxford Colleges and PPHs: Original Article in Oxford Today . Heraldry as Branding . Heraldry as Fun .  Coat of Arms vs. Crest . Sinister Questions . Visit to the College of Arms . Windsor Herald Talks to New Yorkers . Shaming of Harvard Law Shield :: Rapid Expansion of Oxford's Colleges and Halls . Oxford Stars . Links to Heraldry, Oxford, GW . Harris Manchester College . Linacre College . St Catherine's . St Cross College . St Edmund Hall . Trinity College :: Regent's Park College . St Benet's Hall . Alphabetized List of Posts

YOUNG AMERICA: The American Universities at 1776 (Updated May 16, 2018)

John Harvard, Cambridge man,
dissenting minister.

When Harvard opened for students in 1642 (it was founded six years before), only 50,000 people lived in Britain's American  colonies.

Yet at the time of the American Revolution more than 130 years later, the colonies had a free population of about 2 million and a slave population of about 300,000, plus children of the slaves who were not at the time counted.

So the colonies grew more than 40-fold during these pre-Revolutionary years of Harvard's existence.

By the end of those 130 years of the colonial era, ten institutions of higher education were founded and nine were open for business, the very first plan for a university being still-born.

Using their modern names, and in order of foundation, the nine institutions that were opened by 1776 are:  Harvard (Massachusetts), William and Mary (Virginia), Yale (Connecticut), Princeton (New Jersey), U. Pennsylvania (Pa.), Columbia (New York), Brown (Rhode Island), Rutgers (New Jersey) and Dartmouth (New Hampshire):

• Four of the universities are in New England – Harvard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth. 
• Two of the other five are in New Jersey, the only colony to have two universities – Princeton and Rutgers. 
• The remaining three are in New York (Columbia), Pennsylvania (U. Penn.) and Virginia (William & Mary).

Two of the universities – Rutgers and William & Mary – are now public research universities, i.e., they are operated by the states of New Jersey and Virginia. The others are the seven private Ivy League universities.

The Colonies vs. The Mother Country

Having nine institutions of higher education in eight of the thirteen colonies by the time of the Revolution was quite impressive, when one considers that as of 1832, more than half a century after the American Revolution, England still had only two universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

Scotland, however, had five universities in four locations–St Andrews (the first university, in Fife), Glasgow, Aberdeen, Marischal (also in Aberdeen) and Edinburgh.

The First American Colonial Universities - Harvard, William & Mary, Yale

Three threads sum up the religious orientation of the early universities in the American colonies:

1. One church, orthodoxy (Roman Catholicism).
2. An alternative orthodoxy (Church of England).
3. Rejection of both (Dissenters).

Harvard was founded by dissenting ministers, especially from Cambridge. William & Mary was created primarily for Anglicans. Yale was for created for dissenters from the new orthodoxy at Harvard.

Because Harvard was first in line, it tended to influence the universities that followed. Stephen Trachtenberg, former president of The George Washington University and a former Churchill Traveling Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford, argues that John Dunster's having come to Harvard from Cambridge at a time when they had a four-year undergraduate program meant that Harvard and then other universities required four years for the B.A. degree.

Oxford and Cambridge later reduced the time for the B.A. to three years for most subjects (Greats is still a four-year program), but American universities were by then wedded to the four-year degree.

By and large, Oxford men were Roman Catholics or orthodox Anglicans.  Cambridge men were dissenters, including dissenters from the original dissenters. Among the exceptions was Alexander Whitaker, a Cambridge alumnus who was an Anglican and who paved the way for the first effort to create a university. Unfortunately, it failed.

Henricus College would have created the first university in the colonies. It was planned in Henrico (named after James I's son Henry) for Varina, Virginia, in 1618, 18 years before Harvard was created. Cambridge-born alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge (and son of much-admired William Whitaker, Protestant scholar and Master of St. John's College, Cambridge) Alexander Whitaker (1585–1616) paved the way for this plan through his active work in the Virginia Colony in 1611-1616. Coming from Anglican parishes in the north of England, he established two churches near Virginia's Jamestown colony. He baptized Pocahontas, creating the illusion that it would be easy to bring the native Americans into the church. James I was initially enthusiastic about the plan for a university at Henrico, Va. with the idea of providing a place to teach both Anglican and Puritan seminarians and to convert the local Indians to Christianity. An area of 10,000 acres on the side of a river was picked out for the campus. However, the idea was still-born. Before it had any students, the Indians targeted for conversion decided to fight back. They laid waste Henrico with a deadly attack in 1622. The king lost his enthusiasm. The colony of Virginia lost its charter. The university idea was ended in 1624.

Harvard was the first durable university, founded by a Cambridge alumnus (Emmanuel College), John Harvard, who donated his library and some money to create the first colonial college that still survives. John Harvard was born to a butcher (married to a woman from Stratford-upon-Avon) in Southwark, a borough of London. Many of John Harvard's family were wiped out by the plague. He emigrated to Boston and served as a dissenting minister. Harvard College was formed in 1636 and was at first called "New College". In 1638, John Harvard was on his deathbed with tuberculosis, he bequeathed his 320-volume library and half his estate to the college. The college was then gratefully renamed after him. It was envisioned as a place dedicated to educating dissenting (Puritan and other) ministers. It opened for teaching and degree-granting in 1642.

Rev. Dr. James Blair 

William & Mary was the second enduring university. It was named after the two co-regents, William III of Orange and his wife, James II's eldest daughter Mary II, who were brought in by Parliament in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to replace Catholic James II of England (last of the Stuart monarchs), and put an end to any plans for another Catholic resurgence in the monarchy. A new university in Virginia was again promoted, this time by Dr. James Blair, a Church of Scotland and subsequently a Church of England adherent, educated at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh. He founded the university at  Middle Plantation, later named Williamsburg in honor of the king. It was founded as planned in 1693 and Dr. Blair served as its president from 1693 to 1743, a 50-year term of office for a college president that one source says has been matched by only one other person in the history of the United States. William & Mary is now a public research university, operating under the oversight of the State of Virginia.

Yale was founded, like Cambridge University, as a refuge for teachers and students troubled by trends in the university they left. The initial step by the Colony of Connecticut to create an institution to train ministers, future politicians and others was passed in 1701, probably because Connecticut was subject to different laws and customs. The initial Yale Fellows, led by James Pierpoint, were all alumni of Harvard - ten Congregationalist ministers who jointly contributed books to create the first Yale library. The first diploma was granted in 1702. The major impetus for the endowment of Yale came from Harvard's sixth (and largely absentee) president Increase Mather, a staunch Puritan who alienated some by being involved in the Salem witch trials and others by then urging restraint. Mather was concerned that the clergy on the Harvard faculty were relaxing their Puritan standards and hoped that Yale would maintain Calvinist religious orthodoxy. In 1718, Increase's son Cotton Mather contacted a Welshman, Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help. Eli Yale had made a fortune while trading in India for the East India Company and gave the university 417 books, nine bales of goods sold for £560, and a portrait of King George I.  The university in return took Yale's name in the hope of further gifts that, alas in the end, did not ensue, in perhaps the first recorded Major Disappointment in a university's Major Gifts campaign.

The Next Three Universities, Founded in the 1740s

Princeton was the first university founded in New Jersey, originally as "the College of New Jersey", in 1746 (it was renamed in 1896). It started teaching a year later and gave its first degree a year after that. It was sponsored by Presbyterians but educated students for ministries in many religions. Its impetus was the Great Awakening, which can be said to have originated from the Oxford "Holy Club" of Charles Wesley and then John Wesley. George Whitefield arrived at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1732, a provincial youth with a West Country accent (for example, it is recorded that he pronounced “Christ” as “Chroist”). He described himself as coming from the tap-room of the family inn. Whitefield had heard of the “Holy Club” before he arrived, and open-hearted Charles Wesley included him. Charles became Whitefield's chief Oxford mentor. In 1736, steely John Wesley entrusted the newly ordained Whitefield with the oversight of the Oxford methodists, while he went with Charles to Georgia. (In 1739, Whitefield returned the favor.) Whitefield soon became as famed as the Wesleys and is given equal billing as the leading inspiration of the worldwide evangelical Great Awakening. This spirit took shape in Pennsylvania in Log College in Bucks County, founded by Presbyterian Minister William Tennent in 1726. The seven founders of the College of New Jersey were Log College participants, all Yale Presbyterians except for one who attended Harvard. They asked Governor Lewis Morris for a charter and he, being Anglican and a Loyalist, refused it.  When Governor Morris died, John Hamilton became Acting Governor, and he, being somewhat more liberal, provided the charter. Aaron Burr, Sr. turned the evangelical ideals of the College's founders into a reality during his presidency, from 1748 to 1757.

The University of Pennsylvania was founded as an Anglican institution in a state founded by an Oxford-educated Quaker, William Penn. It was originally called the "College of Philadelphia".

Columbia University, originally called "King's College" because it claims a royal charter, was founded in 1754. It was intended for Anglican ministers but was charged with a policy of religious liberty. The impetus for the creation of Columbia was in part that evangelicals across the river had formed the college that was later called Princeton. In 1746 an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the this purpose. In 1751, the assembly appointed ten New York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct state lottery proceeds towards the foundation of a college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was the only instructor of eight students.

The Final Three Universities, Founded in the 1760s

Brown University was founded by Baptists in 1764, but its trustees were required to come from a balanced portfolio of religions, including Anglicans. The Governor of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, was a Cambridge graduate. Rhode Island was a haven for dissenting ministers who were expelled by the Puritan leadership of Massachusetts for straying from Puritan dogma. In 1763, The Reverend James Manning, a Baptist minister, an alumnus of Princeton (as it would be called), was sent to Rhode Island by the Philadelphia Association of Baptist Churches to found the college. At the same time, local Congregationalists were working toward a similar end. Former colonial governors of Rhode Island Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward were involved. The college's charter was granted in the form of an Act passed by Rhode Island's General Assembly. The college was called Brown after a a gift from Nicholas Brown, Jr. The charter required that the makeup of the board of 36 trustees include, 22 Baptists, five Friends, four Congregationalists, and five Church of England members.

Rutgers was created in 1766. Originally chartered as Queen's College, Rutgers was renamed in appreciation of Col. Henry Rutgers, a New York City landowner, whose gift allowed the college to reopen after financial insolvency. Rutgers was originally a private male-only liberal arts college affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church.  It was named as the state's sole land-grant college in 1864 under the Morrill Act.  It evolved into a coeducational public research university after being designated "The State University of New Jersey" by the New Jersey Legislature in 1945 and 1956. It is one of only two colonial colleges that later became public universities, the other being William & Mary.

Dartmouth College was created as a Puritan (Congregational) college in 1769 by Eleasar Wheelock, a Congregational minister. New Hampshire itself was founded in part by Cambridge alumnus John Wheelwright, whose dissenting religious views forced him to leave Massachusetts.  Dartmouth went through a long period of difficulties and found its feet in the early 20th century.