Excerpt from S. John Baptist College

During nearly the whole Of their existence, until the changes which resulted from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act 1877, the Colleges of Oxford have been so closely bound to the Church Of England that the study of their life may properly be regarded as a part of ecclesiastical history. A great experiment in education, one of the chiefest works Of the Church, they have under gone many changes and modifications, internally and from without, as the currents of doctrine and feeling have ebbed and flowed. In their social life, as in the way in which they have responded to the intellectual ideal they repre sented, they serve as examples, sometimes painful ones, of the way in which the Church has carried out her mission. Times of energy and sloth, of decay and revival, are represented in them as in the Church at large. They are Often a picture in little of the wider body to which they belong. A College which like S. John's was founded at the very crisis of the reforming movement in England deserves the special attention of the student of Church history; and it is for this reason that I have not hesitated to turn aside for a while from the investigation of the English Reformation which occupies such leisure as I can Obtain, and to put together notes which I have made from time to time on the history of the College to which it is my happy privilege to belong.

This book does not pretend to be a complete history of the College. My utmost hope is that it may serve to direct attention to points Of special interest, and to existing materials Of great value, which may be utilised at some future date, possibly by myself, more probably by some one hereafter better qualified for the task. In writing it I have endeavoured to bring into special prominence what has not hitherto been printed or exists only in very rare books. NO history of S. John's has' till now been written, so that in some parts I have had to break new ground. But few Colleges have had among their alumni antiquaries more devoted to the study of all that belongs to their history, and the work of all subsequent investigators has been greatly lightened by the labours Of Rawlinson, Holmes, and Derham. After the mss. In the College, the chief sources of information are the collections of Rawlinson and Tanner. These I have examined, and with them all other ms. Materials in the Bodleian Library. The printed authorities for the history of the Colleges are well known and need no special mention here.

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