Closing Remarks I

This chapter shows that Corpus Christi College stood at the beginning of a new cycle in the story of Oxford, one in which other founders modelled their work on the forward-looking plan devised by Bishop Richard Fox, and the success, or even the survival, of the academy in difficult times owed much to the efficacy of collegiate institutions. Fox did indeed establish his society on strong foundations, with statutes that enabled its ‘busy bees‘ to survive and thrive, even if their extreme precision appeared to leave little space for subsequent adaptation. Corpus was crucially the product of its founder’s vision and so it is unusually important to establish what Richard Fox wished to achieve. In its first generations, Corpus Christi was envisaged as designed to produce ‘pious humanists‘ or, perhaps ‘ecclesiastical humanists‘.