John Fell (bishop)

In 1637 at age 11 he became a student at Christ Church, and in 1640 because of his "known desert", he was specially allowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, to proceed to his degree of BA when lacking one term's residence.

[3][4] After the Restoration, Fell was made prebendary of Chichester, canon of Christ Church (27 July 1660), dean (30 November), master of St Oswald's hospital, Worcester, chaplain to the king, and D.D.

He attended chapel four times a day, restored to the services, not without some opposition, the organ and surplice, and insisted on the proper academic dress which had fallen into disuse.

Delinquents were not always treated thus mildly by Fell, and Acton Cremer, for the crime of courting a wife while only a bachelor of arts, was punished by having to translate into English the whole of Scheffer's history of Lapland.

Fell disapproved of the use of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin for secular purposes, and promoted the building of the Sheldonian Theatre by Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon.

[3] In the theatre was placed the Oxford University Press, the establishment of which had been a favourite project of Laud and now engaged a large share of Fell's energy and attention, and which as curator he practically controlled.

"Were it not you ken Mr Dean extraordinarily well," wrote Sir Leoline Jenkins to John Williamson in 1672, "it were impossible to imagine how assiduous and drudging he is about his press."

[3] Fell also wrote lives of his friends Henry Hammond (1661), Richard Allestree, prefixed to his edition of the latter's sermons (1684), and Thomas Willis, in Latin.

Manuscripts of Saint Augustine were placed in the Bodleian at his behest; while other libraries at Oxford generously collated a catalogue for the use of the Benedictines at Paris, who were then preparing a new edition of the father.

He undertook to train as missionaries four scholars at Oxford, procured a set of Arabic types, and issued from these the Gospels and Acts in the Malay language in 1677.

"Let not Fell," writes R. South to Ralph Bathurst, "have the fingering and altering of them, for I think that, barring the want of siquidems and quinetiams, they are as good as his Worship can make."

And Anthony Wood, after declaring that Fell "was exceeding partial in his government even to corruption; went thro' thick and thin; grasped at all yet did nothing perfect or effectually; cared not what people said of him, was in many things very rude and in most pedantic and pedagogical," concluded that he "yet still aimed at the public good."

"[6] In November 1684, at the command of King Charles II, Fell deprived John Locke, who had incurred the royal displeasure by his friendship with Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, and was suspected as the author of certain seditious pamphlets, of his studentship at Christ Church, summarily and without hearing his defence.

Fell had in former years cultivated Locke's friendship, had kept up a correspondence with him, and in 1663 had written a testimonial in his favour; and the ready compliance of one who could on occasion offer a stout resistance to any invasion of the privileges of the university has been severely criticised.

With all his faults Fell was a great man, "the greatest governor," estimated Speaker Onslow, "that has ever been since his time in either of the universities," and of his own college, to which he left several exhibitions for the maintenance of poor scholars, he was a second founder.

[6] A sum of money was left by John Cross to perpetuate Fell's memory by an annual speech in his praise, but the Felii laudes were discontinued in 1866.

The statue placed on the northeast angle of the Great Quadrangle bears no likeness to the bishop, who is described by Hearne as a "thin grave man.