XVII.

WADHAM COLLEGE.

BY J. WELLS, M.A., FELLOW OF WADHAM.

Wadham College occupies an interesting position in the history of the University, as having been the last College founded until quite recent times, for both Pembroke and Worcester were but expansions of older foundations. Though actually dating from the reign of James I., it may be said to share with Jesus College the honour of belonging to the days of Elizabeth, as its founder and foundress were well advanced in years at the time when they carried out their long meditated plans, and both in the spirit which animates its statutes and in the architecture of its fabric, Wadham College belongs rather to the sixteenth than to the seventeenth century.

The founder of the College, Nicholas Wadham, of Merifeild, in the county of Somerset, belonged to one of the oldest and wealthiest of the untitled families of the West of England. He married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Petre, the well known benefactor of Exeter College, but having no children, he resolved to devote his great wealth to some pious use. Antony à Wood tells us that his original intention had been to found a College at Venice for English Romanists, but that he was persuaded to change his plans; the story[307] seems doubtful, and Nicholas Wadham at all events died in the Anglican communion. All his patrimonial estates went to his three sisters, who had married into some of the chief families of the West of England; but he had for some time past been accumulating money for his new foundation; and in two conversations held with his nephew and executor, Sir John Wyndham, very shortly before his death, he had given full directions as to many points in the College. Of these two were especially notable: he desired that the Warden as well as the Fellows should be unmarried; and also that each of them should be “left free to profess what he listed, as it should please God to direct him;” he did not wish them to “live thro’ all their time like idle drones, but put themselves into the world, whereby others may grow up under them.” He also arranged that the College should be called after his own name, and that the Bishop of Bath and Wells should be perpetual Visitor.

His widow and executors set to work at once to carry out his wishes, and the present site of the College was purchased from the city of Oxford for £600. It had formerly been occupied by the Augustinian Friars, whose name survived in the old phrase for degree exercises,[308] “doing Austins,” down to the beginning of this century. The foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on July 31st, 1610, and two years later the foundress, having some time previously obtained a charter from James I., put forth her statutes (August 16th, 1612). In these her husband’s wish was carried out by the provision that Fellows should resign their posts eighteen years after they had ceased to be regent masters: this provision remained in force down to the commission of 1854. Originally the Warden was not required to be in orders, but was allowed to proceed to his Doctorate in Law or Medicine as well as in Divinity; but the foundress was persuaded to alter her arrangements on this point, and the two former alternatives were struck out.

There were to be fifteen Fellows and fifteen scholars, the former being elected from among the latter; of these three scholars were to be from Somerset, and three from Essex, while three Fellowships and three scholarships were restricted to “founder’s kin.” These were originally intended for the children and descendants of the sisters above-mentioned, but in course of time it became frequent to trace kinship with the founder through collateral branches of the Wadham family. The buildings erected by the foundress are remarkable in more ways than one. Their architect, who is supposed to have been Holt[309] of York, the architect of the New Schools, was employed at several other Colleges in Oxford, _e. g._ at Merton, Exeter, Jesus, University, and Oriel. The resemblance between the inner quadrangle at the first of these and that of Wadham is very marked. Owing to the extent of the original design and the excellence of the building material employed, Wadham has the unique honour among the Colleges of Oxford of having remained practically unaltered since it left its foundress’ hands.

Of the various parts of the building the hall and the chapel are the most remarkable; the latter in the shape of its ante-chapel is a combination of the short nave found at New College and of transepts such as are found at Merton; while in the tracery of the windows of its choir it furnishes a continual puzzle to architectural theorists; for though undoubtedly every stone of it was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and though the wood-work is pure Jacobean, the windows both in their tracery and in their mouldings belong to a period one hundred and fifty years earlier. In fact the chapel is exactly one of the magnificent choirs with which the churches of Somerset abound, and it is difficult to believe that the resemblance is not more than accidental; for in the building documents of the College we have clear evidence of both materials and workmen coming from the county of the founder. The cost of the whole building was £11,360.

Even before it was finished, the new Foundation received a munificent present in the shape of the library of Dr. Philip Bisse, Archdeacon of Taunton, who dying about 1612 left some two thousand books (valued at £1700?); these books are all distinguished by having their titles carefully inscribed in black letter characters on the sides of their pages, near the top, and may be not unworthily compared to the famous library, the cataloguing of which made Dominie Sampson so happy a man. The foundress made Dr. Bisse’s nephew an original Fellow of her College, though he had not yet taken a degree, “Ob singularem amorem avunculi ejus,” and also had painted the portrait of the Archdeacon in full doctor’s robes, which still adorns the library.

On April 20th, 1613, the first Warden, Robert Wright, formerly Fellow of Trinity College and Canon of Wells, was admitted at St. Mary’s, and in the afternoon of the same day he in turn admitted the Fellows and scholars nominated by the foundress. Wright, however, very shortly resigned his position, because (says Wood) he was not allowed to marry.

The foundation of the College seems to have attracted considerable attention elsewhere than in Oxford. Among the State Papers in the year 1613 is calendared (somewhat incongruously) a parody of the statutes of Gotam College, founded by Sir Thomas à Cuniculis,[310] with a license from the Emperor of Morea; and from the first the number of men matriculated was very large, and the class from which they were drawn a wealthy one. This is most clearly proved by the fact that although the College had been in existence less than thirty years when the Civil War broke out, the amount of plate surrendered by it to the King was only surpassed by one other Foundation. The College still possesses an inventory of articles given, which make up “100 lbs. of white plate and 23 lbs. of gilt plate.” As might have been expected, a large proportion of the members of the College at this period, and for long after, came from the West country; two-thirds, probably, were from Dorset, Somerset, or Devon; and this connection has happily never been entirely broken. Among these West countrymen was the famous Admiral, Robert Blake, who graduated from Wadham in 1617 at the age of twenty, and was still in residence six years later. His portrait now hangs in the hall.

During this first period of College life, down to the outbreak of the rebellion, two events deserve a passing notice. The first of these was the fierce controversy[311] waged between James Harrington, one of the original Fellows, and the rest of the Foundation, as to his right to retain his place, although he possessed an annual pension of £40 a year. There are numerous references to this in the Calendar of State Papers; and Laud, as Bishop of Bath and Wells, was put to no small trouble to decide it. In the end Harrington apologized for “having behaved himself in gesture and speeches very uncivilly”; but the quarrel only ended with the expiration of his Fellowship in 1631. Much more important was the attempt of King James, in 1618, to obtain a Fellowship for William Durham of St. Andrews, “notwithstanding anie thing in your statutes to the contrarie.” Unfortunately we know very little about this early parallel to James II.’s attempt at Magdalen; but the College clearly was successful in upholding its rights.

It is perhaps not altogether fanciful to trace the feelings of the College as to James I. in the register next year (1619), when its usual dry formality is given up, and Carew Ralegh the son of the King’s late victim, is entered as “fortissimi doctissimique equitis Gualteri Ralegh filius.”

Wadham, during this same period, completed its material fabric by receiving the gift of the large east window of the chapel from Sir John Strangways, the founder’s nephew; it was made on the premises by Bernard van Ling, and the total cost was £113 17_s._ 5_d._ (including the maker’s battels for ten months and a week--£2 17_s._ 8_d._).

The Civil War affected Wadham as it did the rest of the University. Its plate disappeared as has been said, only the Communion plate (“donum fundatricis”) being spared; its students were largely displaced to make room for the King’s supporters, among whom the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Herbert, seems to have made Wadham a kind of family residence. After the final defeat of the King, the Warden, Pytt, and the great majority of the Foundation were deprived by the Parliamentary Commissioners. But it may be fairly said that the changes made did far more good than harm to the College. The man appointed to the vacant Wardenship was the famous John Wilkins, divine, philosopher, and mathematician, who enjoyed the almost unique honour of being promoted by the Parliament, by Richard Cromwell, and by Charles II., and to whom the College owes the honour of being the cradle of the Royal Society. Evelyn records in his _Diary_ (July 13th, 1654), how “we all dined at that most obliging and universally-curious Dr. Wilkins’s, at Wadham Coll.”--and speaks of the wonderful contrivances and curiosities, scientific and mechanical, which he saw there. Round Wilkins gathered the society of learned men who had previously begun to meet in London, and who were afterwards incorporated as the Royal Society. The historian of that famous body, Dr. Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester and himself a member of the Foundation of Wadham College, records[312] how “the first meetings were made in Dr. Wilkins his lodgings, in Wadham College, which was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men,” and that from their meetings came the great advantage, that “there was a race of young men provided against the next age, whose minds receiving their first impressions of sober and generous knowledge were invincibly armed against all the encroachments of enthusiasm.” The traditional place of these meetings is the great room over the gateway, though this is more than doubtful. Of the original members, there belonged to Wadham College, besides Wilkins--Richard Napier, Seth Ward, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, the famous mathematician; and last but not least, that “prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren,” who after being a Fellow Commoner at Wadham College, was elected Fellow of All Souls, and who showed his affection for his original College by the present of the College clock and a beautiful sugar-castor, of which the latter is still in daily use, while the face, at any rate, of the former remains in its old place. The works of the clock are preserved in the ante-chapel as a curiosity.

Warden Wilkins had for two hundred years the distinction of being the only married Warden of Wadham. His wife was a sister of the Lord Protector, with whom he had great influence, which he used for the benefit of the University as a whole, and of individual Royalists. Anthony Wood seems mistaken in saying that Wilkins owed his dispensation to marry to his connection with Cromwell. The original MS. in the possession of the College bears date January 20th, 1652 (four years before Wilkins actually married), and comes from the Visitors of the University of Oxford. Of both Wren and Wilkins there are portraits in the Hall.

The most distinguished undergraduates of this period were John, Lord Lovelace, who took a prominent part in the Revolution (a fine portrait of him by Laroon hangs in the College hall), William Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and one of the famous “Seven Bishops,” and the notorious Mr. Charles Sedley, a donor of plate to the College, all of whom matriculated in 1655. An even better known member of Wadham was John Wilmot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who matriculated in 1659, immediately after Warden Wilkins had been promoted to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge; but as he proceeded to his M.A. in September 1661, being then well under fourteen, he probably did not give much trouble to the disciplinary authorities. John Mayow too, the distinguished physician and chemist, who became scholar in 1659, continued the scientific traditions of the College.

Wilkins and three of his four successors all became Bishops; of these the most famous was Ironside, who, as Vice-Chancellor in 1688, ventured to oppose James II. in his arbitrary proceedings against Magdalen. The fall of James saved Ironside, who was made Bishop of Bristol (and afterwards of Hereford) by William III., and was succeeded by Warden Dunster, the object of Thomas Hearne’s hatred and contempt. He accuses him[313] of being “one of the violentest Whigs and most rascally Low Churchmen” of the time, and of various other defects, physical and moral, which may perhaps be conjectured to be in Hearne’s mind convertible terms with the above.

Wadham as a whole during this period was strongly Whig and Low Church; not improbably this was due to its close connection with the West country, where the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion had taught men to hate the Stuarts; but whatever the reason, the fact is undoubted. Probably there is no other College hall in England which boasts of portraits both of the “Glorious Deliverer” and of George I.

As might be expected, Hearne’s account of the College is extremely black. He dwells on the blasphemies[314] for which a certain Mr. Bear of Wadham was refused his degree; and even the distinguished scholar, Dr. Hody, the Regius Professor of Greek and Archdeacon of Oxford, is continually attacked by him, though he admits “he was very useful.”[315] Hody, both in his life and by his will, showed himself a loyal son of his College. Dying at the early age of forty-six, he bequeathed the reversion of his property to Wadham, for the encouragement of Hebrew and Greek studies; and the ten exhibitions he founded (now made into four scholarships) have been especially successful in developing the study of the former language. A far greater scholar than Hody belongs in part to Wadham at the same period. In 1687 Richard Bentley was incorporated M.A. of Oxford from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and put his name on the books of Wadham. He was in Oxford as tutor to the son of Bishop Stillingfleet.

Almost to the same period belong the buildings erected on the south side of the College (No. IX. staircase), which were begun in 1693, and finished next year; it was intended to build a similar block on the north side, beyond the Warden’s lodgings, as is shown in some old prints, but this was never carried out. I am unable to assign a date to No. X. staircase. It certainly belonged to the College before the final purchase of the staircase next the King’s Arms (No. XI.), which was made early in the present century: there exists a drawing of it in a much earlier style of architecture than the present, or than that of No. IX.

The only other person worthy of special mention connected with the College at this period, was Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons throughout the reign of George II., who matriculated in 1708; his affection for Wadham is illustrated by the splendid service-books presented by him to the chapel, while two excellent portraits show the pride which the College felt in him.

The fifty years which follow the promotion of Warden Baker to the see of Norwich in 1727 were an undistinguished period in the history of Wadham, as in that of the University generally. Of the four Wardens, only one, Lisle, became a bishop, and there is reason to think the College was in a bad state; very few of its members rose to distinction, though James Harris of Salisbury, the author of _Hermes_[316] (whose portrait by Reynolds hangs in the hall), Creech, the translator of Lucretius, and Kennicott, the Hebrew scholar, might be mentioned.

But in Warden Wills, who was appointed in 1783, the College found its most liberal benefactor since the death of the foundress. It was in his time that the present beautiful garden was laid out on the site of the old formal walks, with a mound in the centre, which appear in the prints of the last century. It has been conjectured with some probability that “Capability” Brown had a hand in the laying out of the garden as it now is. Whoever was the gardener, it may be confidently asserted that a finer result was never produced in so small a space. Warden Wills in another way increased the beauty of the College, by buying for the use of the Warden the lease of a large piece of land to the north of the College property; of this the College afterwards bought the freehold from Merton, and it was incorporated with the Warden’s garden.

Early in this century too the College received its final extension in the way of rooms, by purchasing from the University the buildings between itself and the King’s Arms, which had formerly been used by the Clarendon Press; the old name of No. XI. staircase, “Bible warehouse,” long preserved in the books of the College the memory of the old use of the buildings: probably the site had belonged to the College from the first, and it was only the remainder of a lease that was now bought. This purchase was made in the Wardenship of Dr. Tournay, who presided over the College with dignity and success for twenty-five years till 1831, when he resigned. The most distinguished member of Wadham during his time was undoubtedly Richard Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, who was elected scholar in 1815, before he had completed his fifteenth year. This fact is duly recorded, at his own especial wish, on his monument in the ante-chapel, as having been the foundation of his subsequent success.

Shortly after the resignation of Warden Tournay, the chapel was taken in hand by the “Gothic Renovators,” a new ceiling was put on, and the whole of the east end was recast by the introduction of some elaborate tabernacle work, which, if not entirely appropriate in design, is yet interesting as displaying a careful study of mediæval models most unusual so early as 1834.

Of the history of the College since 1831 there is not space to say much. Under Warden Symons it became recognized as the stronghold of Evangelicalism in the University; so much was this the case that on his nomination to the Vice-Chancellorship in 1844, he was opposed by the Tractarian party; but this unprecedented step met with no success, as the Chancellor’s nomination was confirmed by 883 votes to 183. It was during his tenure of the Vice-Chancellorship (1844-8) that proceedings were taken against Mr. Ward, and against Tract No. XC. But if on the one hand the College produced leading lights of the Evangelical school, like Mr. Fox and Mr. Vores, it also lays claim to Dr. Church, the late Dean of St. Paul’s, and Father Mackonochie. It may well be doubted whether there ever was a more brilliant period in the history of Wadham than about the middle of the century, when Dr. Congreve was Tutor and one of the leaders in the University of the “Intellectual Reaction” against the Tractarian movement. With him as Tutor was associated the late Warden, Dr. Griffiths, whose name will be always remembered as that of one whose true interest throughout life was in his College, and who ranks among its benefactors by his bequests, especially that of his collection of prints and drawings illustrative of the history of the College and of those who had been educated at it.

Under them within less than ten years there were in residence as undergraduates the present Bishop of Wakefield, the late Professor Shirley, Dr. Johnson the Bishop of Calcutta, Mr. B. B. Rogers the scholarly translator of Aristophanes, Mr. Frederic Harrison, the present Warden, Professor Beesly, Dr. Bridges afterwards Fellow of Oriel, Dr. Codrington the missionary and philologer, and others who might be mentioned, who have won distinction in ways most various. Wadham carried off three Brasenose Fellowships in succession within a very short space of time, just as in 1849 its Boat Club had “swept the board” at Henley; these were but the outward signs of the intellectual and physical activity of the College. And here its story must be left, for we are already among contemporaries, while the action of the Commission of 1854-5 has drawn a gulf for good or ill between old and modern Oxford. Enough has been said to show that the sons of Wadham have not been altogether unworthy of a College of which other than her own sons have said that to know her and “to love her was a liberal education.”