It’s late fourteenth century England, and a religious reform movement known as Lollardy was on the rise.
The incomparable Sellar and Yeatman had it thus:
During this reign the memorable preacher Wyclif collected together a curious set of men known as the Lollards or Dullards, because they insisted on walking about with their tongues hanging out and because they were so stupid that they could not do the Bible in Latin and demanded that everyone should be allowed to use an English translation. They were thus heretics and were accordingly unpopular with the top men in the Church who were very good at Latin and who liked to see some Dullards burnt before every meal.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica will give you more detail if you need to know. Importantly, remember that John Wyclif is not the same person as Wyclef Jean.
Anyway, Lollardy was considered a problem by the church, and in 1427 Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, founded a college in Oxford as, apparently, “a little college of true students of theology who would defend the mysteries of Scripture against those ignorant laymen who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearls.”
Benefactions in 1436 and 1437 enabled the nascent college to establish a physical base in Oxford, with a chapel, a library, a hall, a kitchen, rooms and, in 1465, rooms for the college’s master. In 1478, a second Royal Charter was granted, at the prompting of Thomas Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln and later Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of York, who was the college’s visitor. (We’ll cover the role of the visitor another time, when I have the right postcard!)
By this stage we’ve got in place the necessities of a college, and a few more elements – leasing the Mitre Inn, gaining a coat of arms – followed in the next hundred years. And the college continued to add buildings and the like, in the way that medieval Oxford colleges did. The interesting parts of our story now are people.
Let’s fast forward to 1726, when John Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln. Discussions within the college set the scene for the establishment of Methodism. Having started as a college to counter heretical beliefs, the college had now enabled a significant branch of non-conformist Christianity to be born.
In 1882 the first Jewish fellow of an Oxford college was elected at Lincoln. This followed the Universities Tests Act, passed in 1871, which removed religious barriers to participation in university life at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. The fellow in question was Samuel Alexander, who later became a professor at Owens College, Manchester, and whose work focused, as best as I can tell, on questions of the nature of space and time. He’d have answered Zeno’s paradox, I suspect, by denying the reality of incrementally smaller units of time. But I may be wrong!
In 1925 Theodor Seuss Geisel enrolled as a graduate student at Lincoln, having completed undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College, USA. We know him better as Dr Seuss. He didn’t, it seems, complete his postgraduate work. Maybe he’d have been a better writer if he had, maybe not – who knows?
In 1952 another notable writer began his studies at Lincoln. This was David Cornwall, who is similarly better known by his pen-name: John le Carré. Cornwall graduated in 1956; it is thought that he was working for MI5 while at the college, and he certainly became an intelligence agent afterwards, continuing until 1964, when the fall-out from Kim Philby’s spectacular betrayal of many British agents means that he left the secret service. Fortunately for him, his writing enabled him to make an alternative living.
Other notable Lincoln names include Rishi Sunak, former PM; Edward Thomas, WW1 poet; and physician John Radcliffe, after whom many Oxford buildings, including the hospital, the camera and the observatory, were named.
Women were admitted to Lincoln for the first time in 1979.
Lincoln College’s full name – reserved for Sunday best – is the College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln. It’s only called that by the monarch and by the university when it has been naughty, I imagine. The college has a very good page on its history – including some shot films – here. There’s more than I could reference in this piece.
The card itself was unposted but has a message written on the back.
Dear Mr Smithies, Great pleasure to talk to you – thanks for your kind offer of support.
And as usual, here’s a jigsaw of the card – enjoy!
