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So, you remember in Gaudy Night how Lord Peter's "John Doe" name for a student is "Mr. Jones of Jesus [College]" and upon meeting Mr. Pomfret he says something along the lines of "Good God, it's Mr. Jones of Jesus" to which Mr. Pomfret replies "Who are you calling a bloody Welshman?"
I have always been mildly perplexed by Pomfret's response, but recent browsing through the histories of Oxford colleges* has revealed that Jesus College was for a time (as in, for about two centuries, from the early eighteenth century to the early twentieth though not at the time of its foundation in the early sixteenth century**) almost exclusively Welsh in student population, with fellowships reserved not merely for Welshmen but for men from SPECIFIC AREAS OF WALES.
So it's a college joke as well as a name joke.
* With the aim of choosing a college for Andrew Foyle. All we know, canonically, is that he's a member of the college Howard Paige attended, which is rather dire because given the apparent Trinity-Balliol rivalry it would be pleasing to send Paige to Trinity ("What could one expect of a Trinity man?" Lord Peter might say of HP) it would not be pleasing to condemn Andrew to the same fate.
**Insert Eddie Izzard routine about the attitude of Americans to history because that is the sort of face I keep making when I think hard about how long Oxford has been going.
I have always been mildly perplexed by Pomfret's response, but recent browsing through the histories of Oxford colleges* has revealed that Jesus College was for a time (as in, for about two centuries, from the early eighteenth century to the early twentieth though not at the time of its foundation in the early sixteenth century**) almost exclusively Welsh in student population, with fellowships reserved not merely for Welshmen but for men from SPECIFIC AREAS OF WALES.
So it's a college joke as well as a name joke.
* With the aim of choosing a college for Andrew Foyle. All we know, canonically, is that he's a member of the college Howard Paige attended, which is rather dire because given the apparent Trinity-Balliol rivalry it would be pleasing to send Paige to Trinity ("What could one expect of a Trinity man?" Lord Peter might say of HP) it would not be pleasing to condemn Andrew to the same fate.
**Insert Eddie Izzard routine about the attitude of Americans to history because that is the sort of face I keep making when I think hard about how long Oxford has been going.
