Chapter XXI: Keble College 461 (10)

In 1653, free elections recommenced, and as the first-fruits of their labours the new Fellows co-opted Christopher Wren. This greatest of all the Fellows of All Souls was in residence for eight years, working from the very first year of his election at architecture, though astronomy and mathematics were also taking up part of his time. Ere he had been many months a Fellow, he erected the large sundial, with the motto _pereunt et imputantur_, which now adorns the Library. In 1661 he resigned his Fellowship on becoming Professor of Astronomy, and shortly after departed for London. Almost the only note of his All Souls life that survives is the fact that he was a great frequenter of the newly-established coffee-house, next door to University College. His famous architectural drawings were left to the College, and are still preserved in the Library.

The troubles of the Restoration passed over with very little friction at All Souls. Palmer, the intruding Warden, died in the very month of King Charles’ return, and Sheldon peaceably took possession of his old place. But within two years he was called off, to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and John Meredith reigned in his stead. This Warden’s short tenure of office is marked by the horrible mutilation of the reredos to which we have already alluded. The College must needs have a “restoration” of its chapel, and in the true spirit of the “restorer,” broke away much of what was characteristic in it, plastered up the rest, and hired Streater, painter to the king, to daub a “Last Judgment” on the flat space thus obtained. Having accomplished this feat Meredith died.

Meredith’s successor, Jeames, prompted and supported by Archbishop Sancroft, succeeded in finally putting down the evil of corrupt resignations, which had survived the Parliamentary Visitation, and blossomed out into all its old luxuriance in the easy times of the Restoration. The fight came to a head in 1680-1, when Jeames, for two years running, used his veto to prevent the election of all candidates nominated by resigners. The veto frustrating any election, the Visitor was by the statutes allowed to fill up the vacant places, and did so. The threat that the same procedure should again be carried out in the next year brought the majority of the College to reason, though for the whole twelve months, Nov. 1680-Nov. 1681, twenty-four discontented Fellows, whom Jeames called “the Faction,” were moving heaven and earth to get the Warden’s right of veto rescinded. From 1682 onwards, the type of Fellow improved, and some of the most distinguished members of the College date from the years 1680-1700. It is in this period, however, that the complaint begins to be heard that All Souls looked to birth quite as much as to learning in choosing its candidates. “They generally,” says Hearne--a great enemy of the College--“pick out those that have no need of a Fellowship, persons of great fortunes and good birth, and often of no morals and less learning.” For the former part of this statement, the names in the College register give some justification: concerning the latter, we can only say that the average of men who came to great things in the list of Fellows is higher in Hearne’s time than at any other. To this period belong Dr. Clarke, Secretary of War under William III., Christopher Codrington--of whom more hereafter--Bishop Tanner the antiquary, Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, and many more.

The reign of James II. was fraught with as much danger to All Souls as to the other Colleges of the University. Warden Jeames died in 1686, and every one expected and dreaded an attempt to force a Papist head on the College. What happened was almost as bad. There was in the foundation a very junior Fellow--only elected in 1682--named Leopold Finch, son of the Earl of Winchelsea, whose riotous outbreaks and habitual fits of inebriety had done much to embitter Jeames’ last years of rule. Finch was a hot Tory, and when, on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion, the University proposed to raise a regiment of trained-bands for the King, was one of the leaders in the movement. He enlisted a company of musketeers from members of All Souls and Merton, and this company was the only part of the University battalion that actually took the field. Its not very glorious record of service consisted in occupying Islip for ten days, to secure the London road, and stop all transit of suspicious persons. When the news of Sedgmoor came, Lord Abingdon bade the company dine with him at Rycot, and they came home “well fuzzed with his ale,” insomuch that their very drum was stove in, and remains so to this day, stored, with one of the muskets borne by the volunteers, in All Souls Bursary.

Finch had nothing to recommend him save this military exploit, his good birth, and his notorious looseness of life and conscience. He was thought by the King capable of anything in the way of submission--perhaps even of conversion to Papacy--and on the death of Jeames the College, to its horror, learned that Finch had been nominated as Warden. Less courageous than the Fellows of Magdalen, the All Souls men, though they refused to elect Finch in due form, refrained from choosing any other head, and allowed the intruder to take possession of the Warden’s house and prerogatives. Finch, though a man of some learning, made as disreputable a head of the College as might have been expected: he jobbed, he drank, he ran into debt, and finally he was found to have embezzled College money. But when William of Orange landed, his Toryism disappeared, and he saved his place by suddenly becoming a hot Whig. All the punishment that he ever got for his usurpation, was that he was compelled to acknowledge himself as only “pseudo-custos,” and to submit to be re-appointed to his Wardenship in a more legal way. He presided for sixteen years over the College with much disrepute, and died in 1702--with the bailiffs in his house.

Finch was succeeded by Bernard Gardiner, a very different character. Gardiner was a good scholar and a good man, but decidedly testy and choleric; in politics he was that somewhat abnormal creature, a Hanoverian Tory, and succeeded in earning the dislike of both parties. He was the Vice-Chancellor who deprived Hearne of his place in the Bodleian for Jacobitism, yet he also fought a furious battle with Wake, the Whig Archbishop, who was his Visitor. With a large faction of the Fellows he had equally numerous passages of arms, yet still the College flourished under him. It was in his time that the great back quadrangle, the new Hall, and the new Warden’s lodgings, were built.

These spacious buildings were erected not with College money, but by generous and long-continued benefactions from the Fellows. Dr. Clarke, the Secretary of War, was the chief donor: “God send us many such ample benefactors” wrote his grateful Warden in the College book. He built the Warden’s lodgings out of his own pocket, besides paying for the “restoration” of the east end of the chapel. This consisted in painting over Streater’s bad fresco[195] a much better production by Sir James Thornhill--the somewhat heathenish but spirited Apotheosis of Chichele--which was taken down in our own generation. Below the fresco were placed two marble pillars, supporting an entablature, which framed Raphael Mengs’ pleasing “_Noli me tangere_,” the picture which now adorns the ante-chapel. After Clarke the most generous donors were Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, who gave £1350 in all; Mr. Greville, who built the new cloister; and General Stuart. Hawkesmoor, Wren’s favourite pupil, was their architect; it is to him that we owe the strange but not ineffective twin-towers, the classic cloister, the vaulted buttery, and the lofty hall with its bare mullionless windows.

But there was one Fellow in the reign of Anne who was even a greater benefactor than Clarke and Lloyd. It was to Christopher Codrington that the College owes the magnificent library, which so far surpasses all its rivals in the University, save the Bodleian alone. Codrington was a kind of Admirable Creighton, poet and soldier, bibliophile and statesman. In the same year he gained military promotion for his gallantry at the siege of Namur, welcomed William III. to Oxford in a speech whose elegant Latinity softened even Jacobite critics, and undertook the government of the English West India Islands. He died at Barbadoes in 1710, and left to his well-loved College 12,000 books, valued at £6000, with a legacy of £10,000 to build a fit edifice to hold them, and a fund to maintain it. The Codrington Library, commenced in 1716, took many years to build, but at last stood completed, a far more successful work than the hall which faces it across the quadrangle. It is 200 feet long, and holds with ease the 70,000 books to which the College library has now swollen. A public reading-room was added to it in 1867, and it is for students of law and history as much of an institution as the Bodleian itself.

The eighteenth century gave All Souls many brilliant Fellows, but it destroyed the original purpose of the foundation, and ended by making it an abuse and a byword. It is only necessary to mention the names of a few of its members, to show how large a share of the great men of the time passed through the College. It claims the great Blackstone--for many years an indefatigable bursar--the second name to Wren among the list of Fellows. Two Lord Chancellors came from it, Lord Talbot of Hensoll, and Lord Northington; Young the poet was a resident for many years; one Archbishop, Vernon Harcourt of York, and eight Bishops had been Fellows. With them, though elected in the opening years of the present century, must be mentioned Reginald Heber, the first and greatest of our missionary prelates.

But in spite of these great names, the College--like the whole University--was in a bad way. Two abuses destroyed its usefulness. The first was the introduction of non-residence. Down to the reign of Anne, a Fellow who left Oxford without the _animus revertendi_, forfeited his Fellowship. Every one quitting the College, even for a few months, had to obtain a temporary leave of absence, and to state his intention to return. Gradually Fellows began to devise ingenious excuses for prolonged non-residence; the favourite ones were that they were about to study physic, and must therefore travel; or that they were in the service of the Crown, and must be excused on public grounds. The test case on which the battle was finally fought out was that of Blencowe, a Fellow who had become “Decypherer to the Queen” (interpreter of the cyphers so much used in despatches at that time). Warden Gardiner strove to make him resign, but Blencowe moved Sunderland, the Secretary of State, to interfere in his behalf with the Visitor, and it was formally ruled that his service with the Crown excused him from residence, as well as from his obligation under the statutes to take orders. For the future the Fellows all found some excuse--taking out a commission in the militia was the favourite one--for saying that they were in the royal service, and thereby excused from residence. From about 1720 the number of residents goes down gradually from twenty or thirty to six or seven. The remainder of the Fellows, like Gibbon’s enemies at Magdalen, remembered to draw their emoluments, but forgot their statutory obligations.

Almost as injurious as the exemption from residence was the introduction of a new theory that Founder’s-kin candidates had an absolute preference over all others. Archbishop Wake is responsible for its recognition: a certain Robert Wood, in 1718, claimed to be elected simply on account of his birth, and the Visitor ruled that he must be admitted, in spite of the custom of the College, which had never before taken account of such a right. At first the Founder’s-kin appeared in small numbers--there are only twelve between 1700 and 1750--but about the middle of the century they appear to have suddenly woken up to the advantages of obtaining a Fellowship without condition or examination. Between 1757 and 1777 thirty-nine Fellows out of fifty-eight elected are set down as _cons. fund._ in the College books. Archbishop Cornwallis in 1777 ruled that it was not obligatory upon the College that more than ten of the Fellows should be of Founder’s kin, and from this time forth the claim of Founder’s kin had no direct influence upon the elections. But the doctrine had done its work. It brought the Fellowships within a charmed circle of county families, outside of which the College rarely looked when the morrow of All Souls Day came round.

The effect of this was to create a society of an abnormal sort in the midst of a group of Colleges which, whatever their shortcomings may have been, continued to make a profession of study and teaching. The Fellows were men of good birth, and usually of good private means. Hence came the well-known joke that they were required to be “bene nati, bene vestiti, et moderate docti,” a saying formed, as Professor Burrows has pointed out, by ingeniously twisting the three clauses in the statutes which bade them be “de legitimo matrimonio nati,” “vestiti sicut eorum honestati convenit clericali,” and “in plano cantu competenter docti.”

The Fellows had no educational duties or emoluments, and consequently no inducement to reside except for purposes of study: and for the most part they were not studious, nor resident. The Fellowships were poor, and so were only attractive to men of means. Hence the management of the College property was a matter of indifference, and it was neglected. Other Colleges no doubt neglected their duties and mismanaged their properties, but All Souls men took a pride in having no duties and in being indifferent to the income arising from their estates. Gradually the College drew more and more apart from its neighbours, until the Fellows made it a point to know nothing and to care nothing about the teaching, the study, or the business that was going on just outside their walls.

Yet a period during which Blackstone, Heber, and the present Prime Minister were numbered among the Fellows, cannot be said to be undistinguished in the history of the College; and this system, indefensible in itself, has handed down some things which the present generation would not be willing to lose. This College, which had become somewhat of a family party, was animated by a peculiarly strong feeling of corporate loyalty. And throughout the change and stir of the last forty years, and in the new and many-sided development of the College, the close tie which binds the Fellow, wherever he may be, to the College has never been weakened. And as the College has come back to an intimate connection with the life of the University, its non-resident element is not without value. The lawyer, the member of Parliament, the diplomatist, and the civil servant, no longer disregarding the University and its pursuits, are an element of great value in a society which is too apt to be engrossed in the details of teaching and of examinations.

The University Commission of 1854 swept away the rights of Founder’s kin together with many other provisions of the Statutes of Chichele, appropriated ten Fellowships to the endowment of Chairs of Modern History and International Law, and threw open the rest to competition in the subjects of Law and Modern History. The Commission of 1877 threatened graver changes, and for a while it was doubtful whether All Souls might not become an undergraduate College of the ordinary type. But in the end the College was allowed to retain, by means of non-resident Fellowships, its old connection with the world outside, while in other ways its endowments were utilized for study and teaching. On the whole it cannot be said to have suffered more than others from the want of constructive genius in the Commissioners. It is and will be a College of many Fellows and several Professors, with liabilities to contribute annual sums to Bodley’s Library and to undergraduate education. The Fellowships are terminable in seven years, but may be renewed in limited numbers and on a reduced emolument.

Under these new conditions All Souls--though still somewhat scantily inhabited--is no longer given over during a great part of each year to the bats and owls. It now plays a useful and important part in the University. Its Hall and lecture-rooms are crowded with undergraduates, its reading-room is full of students of law and history, and its Warden and Fellows have produced in the last ten years about twice as many books as any two other Colleges in the University put together. Last, but not least, it has continued most loyally to fulfil its obligation of providing prize Fellowships; no other foundation can say, though several are far richer than All Souls, that it has regularly offered Fellowships for competition for twenty consecutive years.

X.

MAGDALEN COLLEGE.

BY THE REV. H. A. WILSON, M.A., FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE.

In the cloisters of Magdalen College, over one of the arches of the “Founder’s Tower,” there is to be seen a heraldic rose surmounting the armorial bearings common to the kings of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster. The rose itself, apparently once red and afterwards painted white, is a curiously significant memorial of the civil strife which affected the early fortunes of the College, and of animosities which were perhaps still too keen, when Waynflete’s tower was built, to allow the Red Rose to appear even as a witness to the fact that his foundation had its beginning under a Lancastrian king.

It was in the reign and under the patronage of Henry VI. that the founder himself rose to his greatness. Of his early life little is known with any certainty. His father, Richard Patten or Barbour, was apparently a man of good descent and position.[196] His mother Margery was a daughter of Sir William Brereton, a Cheshire gentleman who had received knighthood for his military services in France. His change of surname was probably made at the time of his ordination as sub-deacon in 1421. That which he adopted was derived from his birthplace, a town on the coast of Lincolnshire. He is sometimes said to have received his education at one or both of the “two St. Mary Winton Colleges,” but of this there is no evidence, and we know nothing of his University career except the fact that he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts. He must have been still a young man when he was appointed in 1428 to the mastership of the school at Winchester, where he also received, from Cardinal Beaufort, the mastership of a Hospital dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen. To his connection with this foundation we may perhaps trace his especial devotion to its patron Saint, and the consequent dedication of St. Mary Magdalen College. In 1440, Henry VI. visited Winchester to gather hints for his scheme for Eton College, and invited Waynflete to become the first master of the school which formed part of his new foundation. He also made him one of the original body of Fellows of Eton, and a few years later promoted him to be Provost. It was most probably at this time, and to commemorate his connection with Eton, that Waynflete augmented his family arms by the addition of the three lilies which appear, with a difference of arrangement, on the arms of Eton College, and on those which Magdalen College derives from its founder.

In 1447, the See of Winchester became vacant by the death of Cardinal Beaufort, and the King at once recommended William Waynflete for election. He was elected within a few days, and was consecrated at Eton on the 13th July of the same year. Immediately after his elevation to the Episcopate, he seems to have set himself to promote the interests of learning, and to provide for a need which his experience as a schoolmaster had impressed upon his mind, by a foundation in the University of Oxford. Early in 1448, before his enthronement at Winchester, he obtained from the King a license to found a Hall for a President and fifty scholars, to be called St. Mary Magdalen Hall.[197] At the same time he obtained, for a term of years, a site and buildings which occupied the ground now covered by the new Examination Schools, and in two or more of the halls included in this property he placed his new society, of which he chose John Hornley to be the first President. In 1456 Waynflete became Chancellor, and on his elevation to that position he at once conceived the idea of improving his foundation at Oxford, by converting it from a Hall into a College, and by providing it with a better habitation and more ample endowments. For this purpose, having obtained the necessary permission from the King, he acquired for the Hall the buildings, site, and property belonging to the ancient Hospital of St. John Baptist. The property of the Hospital included the tenements which the members of the Hall had until this time inhabited. The Hospital itself was a non-academical institution, having for its purpose the care of pilgrims and the relief of the poor.[198] It had been in existence before the reign of John, from whom, while he was still known as Count of Mortain, its Master and Brethren had received benefactions; and it had been endowed, and perhaps refounded, by Henry III. The existing Master and Brethren retired upon pensions, the poor inmates of the Hospital were duly provided for, and the Hospital was united to the College, which Waynflete founded by a charter of June 12th, 1458. The members of the Hall, with the exception of Hornley, who retired to make way for William Tybarde, the first President of the College, were transferred to the new foundation, and the Hall ceased to exist.

The members of the College appear to have continued to occupy the buildings formerly leased to the Hall, which had now become their own property, until the Founder should carry out his intention of providing new buildings on the site of the Hospital, and the land adjoining it. The fulfilment of this intention was long deferred, as were some of the plans upon which Waynflete now entered for the increased endowment of his foundation. The troubles in which the country was now for some years involved, and the change in Waynflete’s own position, probably account for the delay. In 1460, a few days before the battle of Northampton, Waynflete resigned the Chancellorship, an act which seems to have brought him into discredit with the Lancastrian party, though not with Henry himself. He does not seem to have taken any active part in the events which followed, on either side; but his sympathies appear to have been with the House of Lancaster. We are told by one authority that he “was in great dedignation with King Edward, and fled for fere of him into secrete corners, but at last was restored to his goodes and the kinges favour.” In 1469, when Edward’s power was fully established, a full pardon for all offences, probable and improbable, was granted to Waynflete: but some years earlier Edward had confirmed to him the charters and privileges of his See, from which we may reasonably infer that his period of hiding had not been very long. It was not, however, till after the death of Henry VI. that the College began to resume its prosperity, and the work of building was actually begun. The foundation-stone of the chapel was laid in 1474; and in 1480, before the building was actually finished, the President and scholars removed from their temporary quarters, and occupied the College, using the oratory of the Hospital for their place of worship until the chapel was completed. The Vicar of St. Peter’s in the East, in which parish the College was situated, gave up all claims to tithes and dues within its precincts in consideration of a fixed annual payment, and the College was transferred by the Bishop of Lincoln, with consent of the Dean and Chapter, to the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Winchester, who were to be also its Visitors.

The society had until this time possessed no body of statutes. Such a code was now given by the founder, and a new President was also appointed by him as successor to Tybarde, who was old and in failing health. The person chosen for this office was Richard Mayew, of New College, who took possession on August 23rd, 1480, and at once proceeded to administer to the members of the College the oath of obedience to the statutes. Ten of the thirty-six members, it appears, at first refused compliance, and were for a time suspended, by the founder’s command, from the benefits of the society. In the following year Waynflete himself came to visit the College, and there received the King, who came from Woodstock to Oxford to inspect the new foundation, and passed the night within its walls. Some further statutes, chiefly concerning elections and admissions, were issued by the founder in 1482, in which year a large number of Fellows and Demies[199] were formally admitted, and the society regularly organized, though its numbers were not yet fixed. In 1483, Richard III. visited the College, being received, as Edward had been, by the founder, and disputations were held before him, at his desire, in the College Hall, in one of which William Grocyn took part. At this time the founder delivered to the College the whole body of the statutes which he had framed, reserving to himself, however, the right to add to them or revise them as he should see fit.

The regulations thus made for the government of the society, provided that it should consist of a President, forty Fellows, thirty Demies, four chaplains, eight clerks, sixteen choristers, a schoolmaster, and an usher. The Fellows were to be chosen from certain counties and dioceses; the Demies, in the first instance, from places where the College had property bestowed by the founder or acquired in his lifetime. The Demies were not to be less than twelve years of age at the time of their election, and were not to retain their places after reaching the age of twenty-five years. The system by which Demies succeeded to vacant Fellowships was the growth of later custom, and was not provided for by the statutes. The schoolmaster and usher were to give instruction in grammar to the junior Demies, and to all others who should resort to them. Provision was made for the teaching of moral and of natural philosophy, and of theology, by the appointment of readers in these subjects, whose lectures were to be open to all students, whether members of the College or not. Besides the foundation members of the College, the statutes allowed the admission of commoners of noble family, whose numbers were not to exceed twenty, and who might be allowed to live in the College at the charge of their relations. The regulations as to the dress, conduct, and discipline of the College were based upon those laid down in the statutes given by William of Wykeham to New College, from which society a Fellow, or former Fellow, might be chosen as President. Save for this exception, no one who had not been a Fellow of Magdalen College was to be accounted eligible for that office.

The endowments of the College, besides the property which was derived from the Hospital of St. John Baptist, and that which had been originally settled upon the Hall, consisted partly of lands acquired by Waynflete for the purpose, partly of the endowments of other foundations which were united or annexed to the College at different times as the Hospital of St. John had been. These were the Hospital of SS. John and James at Brackley in Northamptonshire, the Priory of Sele in Sussex,[200] the Hospital of Aynho, a hospital or chantry at Romney, the Chapel of St. Katharine at Wanborough, and the Priory of Selborne in Hampshire.[201] An intended foundation at Caister in Norfolk, for which Sir John Fastolf had provided by his will, was by Waynflete’s influence diverted to augment the foundation of the College. The Fellowships to be held by persons born in the dioceses of York and Durham, or in the county of York, were partly provided for by special benefactions from Thomas Ingledew, one of Waynflete’s chaplains, and by John Forman, one of the Fellows of St. Mary Magdalen Hall.

Besides the endowments which Waynflete bestowed on his College during his lifetime, he bequeathed to it by will all his manors, lands, and tenements, with one exception; and he further recommended it to the special care of his executors, directing that they should bestow upon it a share of the residue of his estate.

The royal favour which had been shown towards the College during Waynflete’s life was continued after his decease (which took place on August 11th, 1486), by Henry VII., who visited the College in 1487 or 1488, and is still annually commemorated on May 1st as a benefactor, on account, as it would seem, of his having secured to the College the advowsons of Findon in Sussex, and Slymbridge in Gloucestershire, and having directed that the latter benefice should be charged with an annual payment for the benefit of the College.[202] Henry also extended his patronage to the President, Richard Mayew, whom he employed in many matters of state business, appointing him to be his almoner, and also to be his Procurator-general at the Court of Rome. Mayew also held during his Presidentship several ecclesiastical offices. In 1501 he was sent to Spain to conduct the Infanta Katharine, about to be married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, to England. This marriage forms one of the subjects depicted in some pieces of tapestry still preserved in the President’s lodgings, which are believed to have been a gift bestowed upon Mayew by Prince Arthur, who twice at least took up his abode in the College, and was entertained by the President on his visits. Mayew’s non-academical employments must have necessitated his repeated absence from his duties as President; and at last, after his election to the See of Hereford, a dispute seems to have arisen as to the compatibility of his episcopal and academical functions. A party among the Fellows, headed by Stokesley, afterwards Bishop of London, who was then Vice-President, declared that by the fact of Mayew’s consecration the office of President had become vacant, and at last obtained from Bishop Fox of Winchester, the Visitor of the College, a decision in favour of their own view. Mayew, in the meantime, had attempted to assert his authority as President in a manner not altogether in accordance with the statutes, and it became necessary for the Bishop of Winchester to hold a formal visitation of the College. This he did by a Commissary, and the records of the Visitation contain many extraordinary charges made by the partizans on each side. Stokesley himself was accused, among other things, of having taken part in some magical incantations, including the baptizing of a cat, in order to discover hidden treasure. The cat, it may be remarked, is sometimes described as _cattus_, sometimes with more elegant Latinity as _murilegus_. These proceedings were alleged to have taken place in Yorkshire; concerning the more immediate affairs of the College, it appears that the strife between the parties had run so high, that some of the Fellows went about the cloisters with armour offensive and defensive. The general result of the Visitation was the acquittal of Stokesley, who cleared himself from all charges to the satisfaction of the Commissary. Bishop Mayew retired from the Presidentship, and was succeeded early in 1507 by John Claymond, formerly Fellow, one of the many distinguished men who were members of the College during the quarter of a century over which Mayew’s term of office had extended. Among other members of the College under Mayew’s rule may be mentioned the celebrated Grocyn, who was Praelector in Divinity, Richard Fox (already referred to as Bishop of Winchester), John Colet, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s, and Thomas Wolsey--the last, perhaps, the most celebrated man whom the College has produced. It was during Mayew’s Presidentship that the Tower, sometimes attributed to Wolsey,[203] was built, and that the cloister on the south side of the quadrangle was added.

The rise of Wolsey in the King’s favour secured the College a friend at Court whose influence was for a time more powerful than that of either Waynflete or Mayew had been. He was appointed one of the King’s chaplains, and employed by Henry VII. in some important missions. Soon after the accession of Henry VIII. he became almoner, and “ruled all under the King.” Throughout the time of his prosperity he kept up friendly relations with the College, and frequent exchanges of presents took place between him and its members. The first Dean of his College in Oxford was John Hygden, who had succeeded Claymond as President of Magdalen; and several members of Magdalen College were among the first Canons of Cardinal College.

Another new foundation closely connected with Magdalen College was the College of Corpus Christi, founded by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who not only induced Claymond to become the first President of his new society, but closely imitated Waynflete’s statutes in those which he gave to Corpus Christi College. These statutes provided that the students of Theology and Bachelors of Arts of Corpus Christi College should attend lectures at Magdalen--the lectures intended being no doubt those of the Praelectors or readers established by Waynflete, who occupied a position not unlike that of the University Professors of a later time. It was perhaps with a view to the advantages afforded by these lectures that a further direction enjoined the members of Corpus Christi College, if compelled by a visitation of the plague to move from Oxford, to take up their quarters near the place where the members of Magdalen College had settled for the time. The second President of Corpus Christi College, Robert Morwent, had been Vice-President of Magdalen, and had migrated with Claymond to take charge of Fox’s infant foundation. These two Presidents of Corpus, with John Hygden, first Dean of Cardinal College and of Christ Church, joined together in a benefaction to their former society. They made provision for the yearly distribution to its members of a sum of money, which was to be, and still is, distributed by the bursar in the chapel during the singing of Benedictus on the first Monday of every Lent.

The “revolution under the forms of law,” effected in the reign of Henry VIII., of which Wolsey’s fall was the beginning, had no great direct effect upon the College. Indirectly, however, the suppression of the religious houses was a cause of considerable expense. The College had permitted the Carmelites of Shoreham, whose house was much decayed, to occupy their annexed Priory of Sele; and it was perhaps only in accordance with the justice of the King’s proceedings that the Priory was in consequence treated as a Carmelite house, and the College compelled to buy back its own property from the persons to whom Henry had granted it. A less important expenditure involved by the King’s proceedings was incurred by the provision of new painted glass, no doubt to replace portions of the chapel windows which had been defaced by the King’s commissioners as containing emblems derogatory of his Majesty’s supremacy. The “linen-fold” panelling of the hall appears to have been placed in its present position in the year 1541; it is said to have come from Reading Abbey, but the groups of figures, the heraldic ornaments, and the not too flattering effigy of Henry VIII., which are now inserted in it, were probably designed for the decoration of the Hall. Except for the acquisition of this wood-work, the College seems to have received nothing from the spoil of the religious orders.

The accession of Edward VI., and the visitation of the University, brought serious trouble upon the College. The President, Owen Oglethorpe, was apparently prepared to accept the earlier stages of the Reformation movement, but he was not prepared to go so far as the party in power required. Some members of the College were of the more advanced school of the Reformers; and much irreverence, with a good deal of wanton destruction, was committed by them, encouraged by letters from the Protector inciting the College to the “redress of religion.” Oglethorpe was removed from the office of President, into which Walter Haddon, a person not eligible according to the statutes, was intruded, in spite of a petition from the Fellows, and the work of reformation proceeded according to the desire of the Council. Haddon is said to have sold many of the effects of the chapel, valued at about £1000, for about a twentieth part of that sum, and to have “consumed on alterations” not only the sum so received, but a larger sum of the “public money” of the College. It was fortunate for the society that the scheme of the Council for the total suppression of the choir, and the alienation of a corresponding part of the College revenue, had been promulgated while Oglethorpe was still President. Under his guidance, with considerable difficulty, the College managed to preserve this part of its foundation unimpaired.

Immediately on the accession of Queen Mary, Walter Haddon received, as appears from the Vice-President’s register, leave of absence on urgent private affairs, and his example was soon followed by those of the Fellows who had been especially notable for their zeal in the “redress of religion.” Laurence Humphrey, one of this party, obtained leave for the express purpose of conveying himself _in transmarinas partes_; and this leave of absence was continued to him at a later time provided that he did not resort to those towns which were known to be the refuge of heretics. He took up his abode forthwith at Zürich. As he was absent from the College during the whole of Mary’s reign, he is perhaps not a sufficient witness of the events of that time. He asserts that the Roman party had great difficulty in re-establishing the old order of things in College, and that the younger members of the society suffered many things at their hands. Of all this, however, there is no evidence in the Vice-President’s register, where most of the offences and almost all the penalties recorded during this period are of an ordinary kind.[204] Oglethorpe was restored to his Presidency, and was succeeded on his elevation to the See of Carlisle, by Arthur Cole, a Canon of Windsor.[205] During the tenure of Cole, and of his successor Thomas Coveney (whom the College chose in preference to three persons recommended by the Queen), there appear to have been differences of opinion on religious matters within the College, and some difficulties in enforcing the due attendance of its members at the chapel services; but there is no sign of what might be called a tendency to persecution on the part of the authorities. The most recalcitrant members of the society seem to have been the Bachelor Demies and Probationer Fellows. Coveney remained President for some time after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation by Oglethorpe; and in the interval between that event and the consecration of Archbishop Parker there are some indications in the register of religious strife within the College. The end of Coveney’s term of office was marked by a contest between himself and some of the Fellows, concerning matters of College business, in which he seems to have exceeded his power as President. He was deprived by Bishop Horn at a Visitation in 1561, on the ground, it is said, that he was a layman; but it might be at least doubtful whether the founder’s statutes strictly required the President to be in Holy Orders; and it is probable that the real reason for his deprivation lay in the fact that Horn regarded him as being too much “addicted to the Popish superstition.”

This fault at all events could not be laid to the charge of Laurence Humphrey, who succeeded him. Horn himself had reported that the members of the College, whom he expected to find of the same school as their President, were willing to accept the tests he proposed to them--to acknowledge the Queen’s supremacy, and to accept the Book of Common Prayer, and the Advertisements. Before Humphrey had been long President the College had ceased to be “conformable,” but its non-conformity was of the Puritan, not of the Romanizing, type. Humphrey himself had a strong objection to wearing a surplice, or using his proper academical dress, and many of his Fellows followed his example in this matter. It required more than one Visitation to induce compliance on such matters. Abuses of another kind, however, were left uncorrected, and even encouraged, by the Visitors. Many Fellowships were filled up by nominations from the Queen, or from the Bishop of Winchester, and it may be added that the persons nominated were not always model members of a College. There were many contentions between the Fellows, and between the President and the Fellows. The general impression given by reading the register of the time of Humphrey and his immediate successors is, that the College was becoming a home of disorder rather than of learning. Nicolas Bond, Humphrey’s successor, seems, however, in 1589 to have made some rather ineffectual efforts to provide for more regular and systematic study among its members. During his tenure of office the society received a visit from King James I., accompanied by his son Henry, then Prince of Wales, who was matriculated as a member of the College. The King was much impressed by the buildings, and greatly enjoyed his visit. The grotesque figures or “hieroglyphics” in the Cloister Quadrangle were painted, as it would seem, in honour of his coming, Moses in particular being adorned _toga coerulea_.

The College, which was Puritan under Humphrey, was even more Puritan under Bond, Harding, and Langton; with Langton’s successor, however, in 1626, the tide set in the contrary direction. Accepted Frewen, if, as his name suggests, he was of Puritan descent, was himself a supporter of Laud’s ecclesiastical policy, and acted with vigour both as President in his own College and as Vice-Chancellor in the University, for the restoration of discipline and good order. The numbers of the College had been increased during his predecessor’s time by the influx of a number of so-called “poor scholars,” whose connection with the College was very slight, and who seem to have in many cases been entered as members of the society by the mere authority of the person to whom they had attached themselves. Frewen made regulations on this subject, and these seem to have been re-inforced a few years later by a letter from the Visitor. Other matters he also took in hand with good effect, especially the restoration of the chapel, on which he seems to have spent large sums of his own, in addition to the corporate expenditure of the College. The windows of the ante-chapel (except the great west window) were part of Frewen’s work, the only part which has been left by the later restoration of 1832.

The outbreak of the Great Rebellion found the College converted from a nest of Puritans into a nest of Royalists and High Churchmen. The King’s demand for loans of money and plate was met with some difficulty, but without hesitation, by a loan of £1000 in money and by the delivery of plate to the value of about £1000 more. When the Parliamentary forces entered Oxford in September 1642 they found at Magdalen “certain Cavaliers in scholars’ habits,” who had “feathers and buff-coats” in their chambers. Some of the scholars, being malignant persons, “scoffed” at the invaders and “at the honourable Houses of Parliament,” and were accordingly made prisoners. Other members of the College had left Oxford a few days before with Byron’s horse, to join the King: among them was John Nourse, Fellow and Doctor of Civil Law, who fell at Edgehill. After that action the King entered Oxford, and Prince Rupert took up his quarters at Magdalen. The King’s artillery was placed in Magdalen College Grove, which served as a drill-ground for the regiment of scholars and strangers which was raised in 1644; batteries were erected in the Walks, and gunners exercised in the College meadows. The timber in the Grove was probably felled for use in the defensive works.[206] A curious contrast to this military preparation was furnished by the imposing ceremonial of Frewen’s consecration as Bishop of Lichfield, which took place in the chapel of the College in April 1644.[207]

Some members of the College were as active on the side of the Parliament as those who remained in Oxford were on the side of the King. A Demy named Lidcott was deprived of his place for having been in arms against the King, serving in Essex’s army as an “antient” of a foot company. A far more celebrated member of the Parliamentary party, John Hampden, had formerly been a member of the College which was the head-quarters of the commander of the troops against whom he fought at Chalgrove.

After the surrender of Oxford, considerable havoc was wrought in the chapel of the College by the Parliamentary troops, who destroyed, among other things, the glass of many of the windows. The organ was appropriated by Cromwell to his own use, and removed by him to Hampton Court, whence it was brought again after the Restoration.[208] The Parliamentary Visitors of the University found few members of the College willing to submit to their authority. The President, Dr. John Oliver, and the greater part of the members were ejected, and the bursar, who obstinately refused to give up keys or papers, was imprisoned. The tenants of the College, however, persisted in paying their rents to him, and special injunctions had to be given to prevent them from doing so. The places in College rendered vacant by expulsions were filled up by the importation of Independents and Presbyterians, Dr. John Wilkinson, a former Fellow, being made President. He was succeeded two years later by Goodwin, a gloomy person, whose examination of a candidate for a Demyship has been recounted by Addison in the _Spectator_.[209] The records of the events in College during the Commonwealth are very scanty. One of the most remarkable proceedings of the intruders was the appropriation and division among themselves of a sum of money which they found in the muniment-room; this was the fund provided by the Founder for special necessities, which had remained untouched since 1585, and the existence of which had perhaps been forgotten. It was for the most part in ancient coinage, the pieces being of the kind known as “spur royals.” Of these a hundred fell to the share of Wilkinson, who seems to have been the instigator of the division; nine hundred more were divided among the thirty Fellows, and the Demies and others, including the servants, received portions of the spoil. Before the Restoration, however, some of the recipients restored the pieces they had obtained, and the greater part of the money was actually repaid in course of time. The fund, under more modern financial arrangements, no longer remains in the muniment-room, but some of the old coins are still preserved there.

On the Restoration the ejected members of the College, or those who were left, were restored to their home. They included the President, seventeen Fellows and eight Demies.[210] Dr. Oliver, however, did not long survive his return; and upon his death began a time of trouble. Charles II. recommended as his successor Dr. Thomas Pierce, a divine who had done much service in the defence of the Church against her assailants, but whom the Fellows, who perhaps knew him better than the King were unwilling, as it seems, to elect. Charles however enforced obedience by a letter as peremptory as any communication which the College afterwards received from his brother, and Dr. Pierce became President. The result was a long warfare between Pierce, the Fellows, and the Visitor, Bishop Morley, whose intentions seem to have been better than his judgment. At last the King interfered, and the difficulty was solved by the promotion of Dr. Pierce to the Deanery of Salisbury, where he found scope for his energies in a controversy with his Bishop. Dr. Henry Clerk was now recommended by the King, and elected by the Fellows, and the society was at peace for some years. That peace was again disturbed, on Dr. Clerk’s death, by the action of James II., who attempted to force upon the College as its President a man unqualified by statute and disqualified by notorious immorality. The history of the struggle which followed is too well known to need repetition here.[211] The Fellows almost unanimously chose one of their own number, and supported him, when duly elected, against the King’s second nominee. In the end, after a year’s exile, they were restored to their College, under Dr. John Hough, the President of their own choice, by the Bishop of Winchester, acting on instructions from the King.

The Revolution brought with it new causes of disquiet, and some members of the College were again ejected as Nonjurors. The great majority, however, of those who had contended against the usurpation of James were content to submit themselves to the new Sovereigns, and retained their places. The most notable member who was thus lost to the College was Dr. Thomas Smith, a man of much learning and ability, and a steady and uncompromising Royalist. In 1689 occurred what was afterwards known as the “Golden Election” of Demies, which included, besides others less known, Hugh Boulter, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, Smallbrook, afterwards Bishop of St. David’s and later of Lichfield, the notorious Henry Sacheverell, and Joseph Addison, the most celebrated member of the College since the Revolution. The residence of Addison in College was not prolonged beyond his year of probation as Fellow; but he has left a memory of himself in the fact that his name has been attached to a portion of the Walks. These it would seem in his time did not extend beyond what is now called Addison’s Walk, but was formerly known as “Dover Pier.”

The members of the College who remained seem to have maintained friendly relations with those who had withdrawn from it as Nonjurors, and even at this time, and certainly after the accession of George I., the sympathy of many among the Fellows was with the exiled rather than with the reigning branch of the Royal House. During the first half of the eighteenth century, indeed, politics flourished in the society more than learning; and although Gibbon’s picture of the condition of the College during his brief residence is rather highly coloured, it cannot be doubted that the general decline of academic activity which affected many of the Colleges in Oxford during the last century, affected Magdalen in no slight degree. A large part of the attention of the society seems to have been given to plans for the rearrangement or the destruction of the College buildings, and for the re-construction of the College on the pattern adopted in what are known as the “New Buildings,” erected in 1735. Some amazing designs for “College improvements” remain in the library, as a memorial of the architectural ambitions of this period. Among the Presidents of the eighteenth century, if we except Dr. Routh, whose lengthened tenure extended over the last years of that century and the first half of the nineteenth, there is but one name of mark--that of George Horne, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, once widely-known by his Commentary on the Psalms. Nor are there many names of mark among the other members of the College in the same century. The learning of Dr. Routh does not seem to have been shared in any conspicuous degree by more than a small proportion of those who passed through the College in his long Presidentship--though towards the end of that period Magdalen numbered among its members several men of note in different ways--James Mozley and William Palmer among theologians, Ferrier among philosophers, Roundell Palmer, now Lord Selborne, among lawyers, Conington among scholars, Charles Reade among novelists, Goldwin Smith among essayists, Charles Daubeny among those who laboured to advance the study of natural science.