Sir Richard Hill

Six students expelled from St Edmonds' Hall, Oxford

Extract from: The life and times of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A. By Robert Philip

The junto who expelled (James) Matthews, (Thomas) Jones, (Joseph) Shipman, (Benjamin) Kay, (Erasmus Middleton) Middleton and (Thomas) Grove were Drs Durell Randolph Fothergill Nowell and the senior proctor Atterbury They evidently feared a new edition of Whitefield and Wesley These men who had turned the world upside down and the church inside out had begun with reading praying and expounding in private houses and if two did so much damage to the old system what might not six do To prevent this danger each of them for the crimes above mentioned was deemed worthy of being expelled the Hall I therefore by my visitorial power said the vice chancellor do hereby pronounce them expelled This was the form of the bull !.

Middleton in his Ecclesiastical Memoir laments that the archives of Oxford should preserve the entry of a record which seemed unsuitable to the character of a great protestant community in the eighteenth century but its unsuitableness is just the reason for its preservation Were it not in the archives it would hardly be credited now and the next century would deem it a mere calumny.

Amongst the writers who exposed the folly and infamy of this decree was Dr Home afterwards bishop of Norwich. He nobly defended the students, whilst Sir Richard Hill lashed, and M Gowan shaved, their judges. But neither this defence nor that volunteered at the trial by two heads of houses, prevented Dr Nowell, the principal of St Mary's Hall, from attempting to justify the expulsion. He had even the effrontery to plead drunkenness as Welling's excuse for ridiculing the miracles.

Whitefield rebuked this conclave with much severity; but in a better spirit than the baronet or the Shaver. His letter to Durell, on the occasion, is scarce now, and as it is not likely to be reprinted, I subjoin some specimens of it. They are not, however, the best as remonstrance, although the best as history. Whitefield never wrote better than on this occasion.

"It hath gladdened the hearts of many, and afforded matter of uncommon joy and thanksgiving to the Father of mercies and God of all consolation, to hear, that for some time past there hath been a more than common religious concern and zeal for promoting their own and others salvation among some of the sons of the prophets. What a pleasing prospect hath hereby been opened of a future blessing to the rising generation! A blessing which we well hoped would be not less salutary and beneficial to the moral, than the new cruse of salt was to part of the natural, world, which the prophet Elisha, when complaint was made that the water was naught and the ground barren, cast into the spring of waters with a "Thus saith the Lord". There shall not be from thence any more dearth or barren land;' so the waters were healed unto this day."