Mature IHotes : 
tEbe Selborne Sodet^’s UDagasine. 
No 142. OCTOBER, 1901. Vol. XII. 
SELBORNIANA. 
Gilbert White. — Mr. R. Holt White writes: — 
“ I should like, with your permission, to examine the question of Gilbert 
White’s asserted unpopularity with his College, a point upon which I think 
distinct injustice has been done to him by some recent writers. 
“ First I wish to point out that, as far as I am aware, the whole of this story 
is of quite recent origin. Certainly I have known Oriel and Oriel men for more 
than thirty years, and I never heard anything of this kind until Dr. Shadwell’s 
criticisms appeared in Clarke’s ‘ Colleges of Oxford.’ No doubt in continuing 
to hold his Fellowship all his life White took an unusual course, and very 
po.ssibly, as Mr. VV. Fowler suggests in your last issue, this may have given rise 
to some disappointment among the younger men ; but then it must not be forgotten 
that every time White refused a College living (as he invariably did) a vacancy 
occurred in the Fellowships by its acceptance by some more junior Fellow. The 
facts upon this head are clear, and I am not now concerned to condemn or 
defend my kinsman upon this matter. But of late years, ever since the appear- 
ance of Ur. Shadwell’s remarks, it has been the fashion to assume as an established 
fact that White’s relations with his College were of an unpleasant character. Nor 
can Mr. Warde Fowler be acquitted in this respect, since, in an article upon 
Gilbert White in Macmillan' s Magazine of July, 1893, he wrote : ‘ I do not wish 
to dwell on this [White’s non-residence at Moreton Pinkney] or on his other 
relations to his college, which were not wholly of a pleasant character,’ &c. 
“Now upon what evidence or facts are these statements and insinuations 
founded ? Mr. Fowler bases his remarks upon Dr. Shadwell’s ‘ severe verdict,’ 
as he terms it. This verdict was pronounced upon the testimony of two entries 
in the Provost of Oriel’s memorandum book, and upon them alone. 
“ In the first of these entries, that of December 15, 1757, the Provost, who at 
this time, as we now know, was on terms of personal unfriendliness with White, 
merely records a proposal to deprive him of the hitherto uncontested right to hold 
the little cure of Moreton Pinkney without residence, and in the other of 1755 
states his supposition, now known to have been unfounded, that White’s inheri- 
tance would vacate his Fellowship. Dr. Shadwell was not, of course, in posses- 
sion of the evidence and explanation which I have been able to adduce, and upon 
these two entries his condemnation of White was based. These entries, as we 
can now interpret them, cannot be said to furnish evidence that White was a 
persona ingrata at Oriel. Is there any other reason to presume his unpopularity ? 
I know of none, and I can truthfully say that most of my leisure time for the 
