On Sunday evening we had the pleasure of welcoming the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, to Evensong and dinner in his capacity as Visitor of the College. All Oxford colleges have Visitors, and formally speaking they are guardians of the interpretation and application of each college’s statutes (or constitution).

Bishop Philip’s visit was an enjoyable and relaxed one, during which he (re)installed me in the President’s seat in the Chapel and kindly prayed for the College. But Visitorial visitations have not always been as congenial. The role today is “primarily symbolic, to remind the colleges of their origins and to enable them to rejoice in them as a rich source of inspiration”. In the past, however, the Visitor was more of a religious enforcer.

Trinity is one of five colleges for which the Bishop of Winchester serves as Visitor, alongside New College, Magdalen, Corpus Christi and St John’s. The last time a Bishop of Winchester had to intervene concretely in one of these colleges’ affairs was in 1911, when he effectively sacked Magdalen’s chaplain for publishing a work that questioned the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. Visitors for other colleges include the King or Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury, other diocesan bishops, the University Chancellor, or senior lawyers.

Our founder, Sir Thomas Pope, likely chose our Visitor for reasons of both theological principle and power politics. Like St John’s, we were created in 1555 during the reign of Queen Mary to provide educated Catholic clergy to support the Counter-Reformation. Winchester had long been a powerful and wealthy see, and the bishop at the time, Stephen Gardiner, was a staunch Catholic who served as Mary’s Lord Chancellor. (He had spent much of the reign of her Protestant predecessor, Edward VI, in prison.) New, Magdalen and Corpus also made a prestigious club for a newly founded college to join.

When Mary died in 1558, however, the religious pendulum swung back to Protestantism. Under Elizabeth I, Robert Horne became Bishop and thus Visitor. He was “a learned man, but a zealous and active Puritan” who wanted masses halted and “monuments tending to idolatrous and popish or devil’s service, as crosses, censers and such like filthy stuff” defaced. In response, the College removed some ornament, equipment and decoration, but also hid some. As for the Fellows, “Much of the College resigned itself to Protestantism. A significant minority, however, did not.”

Three centuries later, there was a less divisive Visitorial visitation in 1853, following a Parliamentary commission into the statutes of Oxbridge colleges. During what must have been a slow news week, this merited an article in the Illustrated London News showing the Bishop, his coterie, and our Fellows and Scholars processing into the Chapel.

The original statutes allowed the Visitor to demand a visitation every three years, but on this occasion the Fellows apparently embraced it. The stakes were potentially quite high. Visitations were to “inquirere etiam exactissime omnes excessus, negligentias, crimina, et delicta quorumcunque, inquisitaque et cognita corripere atque punire, juxta omnem vim, formam, et effectum Statutorum eorumdem…”. In other words, they were to “enquire very precisely into all excesses, neglects, crimes, and offences of any kind, and to reprove and punish faults investigated and identified, in line with all the power, force and effect of the Statutes…”. Perhaps Bishop Philip will pick this up next time he dines with us.