The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-22 00:00:00

THE LATE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH.

In the late Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Francis
Jenne, whose death it is our duty to announce, the
nation has lost not only an able and zealous bishop,
but one of our earliest university reformers a line in
which his merits have never, perhaps, been suffi-
ciently acknowledged. A native of one of the
Channel Islands, of French extraction, and early
educated in France, he came up to Oxford,
won his way to the highest honours unaided by any ad-
ventitious circumstances, and became in succession head
master of a great and important school, the head of his
college, than a dean, and lastly a bishop. Such was Dr.
Jeune—a self-made man ; and as a self-made man he was
naturally anxious to afford at Oxford the same advantages
to others without restriction as he had himself enjoyed.
For this he lived and laboured, and for his services in
this capacity we will be remembered in Oxford when the
fact that in his lEtter days he wore a mitre has been
forgotten.
His father, Mr. Francis Jenne, was a gentleman of
Jersey, and represented a family which had settled in that
island on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Born in
1806, we find the son at 17 years of age, in spite of the
disadvantages of a French education, elected to a scholar-
ship at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he took his
B.A. degree, with first - class honours in the classical
schools at 21. In due course he became Fellow and
Tutor of his college, and Public Examiner, and
after having spent a year or two in Canada as tutor
to the sons of the Governor-General (the late Sir
John Colborne, afterwards Lord Seaton), he was
elected in 1834 to the head mastership of King Ed-
ward's School at Birmingham, which he extensively
remodelled, after a fashion certainly more popular
now than it was thirty years ago, by the intro-
duction of English and modern science. His great
success here recommended him to the fitvourable
notice of the Liberal Ministry, whose politics he strongly
espoused when most of the clergy disdained all connection
with " Whigs "or " Whiggery." Lord John Russell, it
is said, recommended him for the deanery of Jersey,
where he took an active part in the establishment of
Victoria College, and the improvement of the local clergy
and the condition of the parish churches. Chosen in
1843 as " Master" of Pembroke College, he came back to
Oxford, whither his fame as a Liberal had preceded him,
and great was the consternation of Tory dons when they
saw him enter the Hebdomadal Council Chamber, and
take his seat, the youngest and far the most liberal—per-
haps also the most able—of that august and venerable
body. The late Master of Balliol is said to have been
especially fearful of the consequences likely to arise to
Oxford from the admission of such " a forward young
man." It was not long either before he began to make
his presence felt among the " Heads of Houses." He was
the earliest of the university reformers in their council ;
and as when the success of university reform was
doubtful he had to bear all the odium, while afterwards,
when the odium was at an end, the praise and merit
of the scheme were given to others, it is only fair to state
here some facts which will not fail to interest
Oxford men, both old and young. In the
first place he strongly recommended to the Govern-
ment the appointment of the commission of inquiry,
and on becoming a member of it he took the most pro-
minent and active part in its proceedings. He wrote the
greater part of the report which that commission pre-
sented to her Majesty, and from that time forward there
was not a well-considered measure of progresslnd reform
introduced at Oxford in which he did not take a leading
share. To him are to be largely ascribed the examination
statutes which established the " Schools " of " Natural
Science " and those of " Law and Modern History," and
though the original idea of a middle-class examination
was suggested by Dr. Temple, it was mainly worked out
under Dr. Jeune's auspices and by his zeal and energy.
In fact, there was not a step forward made at Oxford
during the twenty years that he was resident in the uni-
versity as head of a college which he did not either propose
or support steadily in its earliest and therefore most un-
nopular stages.
He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford in
1858 and the following years during the residence of tl.e
Prince of Wales, and on all secular matters showed
himself one of the most ab'e men of business
in the university. In 1864 he accepted from Lord
Palmerston the deanery of Lincoln ; but after a few
months' tenure of that post he vacated it, on his elevation
to the bishopric now vacant by his early and premature
decease, just as he was becoming acquainted with his
diocese and the wants and merits of the parochial clergy,
but not before be had shewn high promise of a useful
episcopal career. He bad been suffering for some time
from heart disease, induced by gout, but the actual
cause of death was the rupture of a blood-vessel in his
lungs.