He had the
misfortune to differ from Laud on the Church Question of the day, and
was prosecuted before the Star Chamber for subornation of perjury,
and heavily fined. There seems no doubt that he was guilty; but it
was to advocacy of moderation and to his dislike of the king's
arbitrary rule that he owed the severity of his punishment. Whatever
his moral character, at all events he gave his college a beautiful
little chapel, which is often compared to the slightly older one at
Wadham; that of Lincoln is much the less spacious of the two, but in
its wood carvings, at any rate, it is superior.
Lincoln had the ill-fortune, in the nineteenth century, to produce
the writer of one of those academic "Memoirs," which reveal, with a
scholar's literary style, and also with a scholar's bitterness, the
intrigues and quarrels that from time to time arise within college
walls. Mark Pattison is likely to be remembered by the world in
general because he is said to have been the original of George
Eliot's "Mr. Casaubon"; in Oxford he will be remembered not only for
the "Memoirs," but also as one who upheld the highest ideal of
"Scholarship" when it was likely to be forgotten, and who criticized
the neglect of "research.
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