Corpus Christi College

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Bishop Foxe, the founder of Corpus was educated at Boston in Lincolnshire and later at Magdalen College Oxford.

Driven from Oxford by the plague, he transferred to Pem­broke College, Cambridge. He became successively Privy Coun­cellor, Keeper of the Privy Seal, Chancellor of Cambridge University, Bishop of Exeter, Bath and Wells, Durham and finally Winchester. It was in 1516 when he was released from affairs of State that he founded the college which, because of its three languages of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Erasmus de­clared would attract more students to Oxford than Rome had ever done!

Generally following the principles established in the statutes of the other colleges those of Bishop Foxe were even more ecclesiastic. But the main difference in Foxe's statutes from all previous foundations was that instead of using the writings of medieval schoolmen, he taught from the original classics. He was the first to appoint a lecturer in Greek. The college began with a high standard of scholarship which it has maintained, more or less, ever since.

Although the college was no less loyal to King Charles than any other, it possesses more of its original plate than any other.

Of its long list of famous alumni, just two very different characters might be mentioned, General Sir Theophilus Ogle­thorpe, founder of the American State of Georgia, and Ruskin, who, elected an honorary fellow in 1871, "deploring the fruitless energy expended" in athletics, organised his small but famous band of undergraduates, who, with pickaxes on their shoulders, fared forth to make, mend or perhaps mar the road at Ferry Hinksey.

Further dates : Gatehouse, Chapel, Hall, Library 1516, Fell­ows' Building 1687-1714, New Lodging for President 1906.

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