From the President MAGDALEN COLLEGE Professor David Clary OXFORD OX1 4AU August 2015 Dear New Magdalen Member, Congratulations on winning a place at Magdalen! I enclose a brief historical sketch of Magdalen College as a stimulus to what will, I hope, develop into an abiding interest in our history and in the history of Oxford as a whole. You will already be conscious of the fact that Magdalen possesses an incomparable environment, both in buildings and landscape, and also a set of carefully nurtured traditions that spring from our rich and colourful history. It is impossible to condense into a few pages a full account of our residential buildings, Chapel, many libraries, gardens and archives. They have evolved in the course of over a half millennium and are very fully documented within the College. The text I am sending you, written by an Old Member of the College, is offered as a starting point for your own exploration of the College and its history. I do hope you will make use of it during the important years that you are about to spend at Magdalen. I have also added my own note on more recent developments in the College. If you would like to know more I would be happy to talk to you myself. The College’s website contains much useful information: www.magd.ox.ac.uk. I am very much looking forward to meeting you in October. Yours sincerely Professor David Clary President MAGDALEN COLLEGE This description of Magdalen is taken, by permission, from The Colleges of Oxford by Miles Jebb (a former member of the college), published by Constable in 1992. The President and Scholars of the College of St Mary Magdalen in the University of Oxford History Magdalen College (pronounced ‘Maudlin’) was founded by William of Waynflete, one of the leading figures in fifteenth-century England. He was the son of Richard Patten of Wainfleet in Lincolnshire, and probably went to New College before being ordained. For many years he was involved in education, first at Winchester and then as Provost of Eton. Not till his fiftieth year did he come to real power: through the patronage of Henry VI he was appointed Bishop of Winchester in 1447 and Chancellor of England in 1456. After the fall of the King, this great survivor adhered to the Yorkists and continued as bishop till his death in 1486 at the age of eighty-eight. (The college arms are those of Waynflete, who derived his heraldic lilies from those of Eton). Magdalen was founded in 1458 on the site of the former Hospital of St John the Baptist which had existed since the thirteenth century for the care of the sick and the relief of poor travellers on a site just outside the city walls. To it now came a number of scholars from Magdalen Hall in the High Street, which had been founded by Waynflete ten years previously. Progress was delayed until Edward IV confirmed the foundation charter in 1467, but thereafter Waynflete acquired several valuable properties for the college. Some of these came from ancient religious foundations which had been suppressed, such as the Priories of Sele and Selborne and the Hospitals of Brackley and Romany. Others came from estates administered by Waynflete, such as those of Sir John Fastolf, a wealthy Norfolk landowner. Construction of the college began in 1474, and Magdalen was able to accommodate Edward IV when he visited Oxford in 1481, and his brother Richard III in 1483. Waynflete was present on both occasions, and on the first he brought with him 800 books to form a library. With the arrival of Richard Mayew as President (1480-1506) the college received its statutes. There were largely based on New College, from which Mayew had come. There was to be a President, forty fellows, and thirty scholars called demies (because they received half of a fellow’s allowance). The thirteen senior fellows formed the governing body. Besides minute specifications of religious observances, the statutes set out a clear educational system and included two novelties. Provision was made for three Readers (in Theology, and in Natural and Moral Philosophy) whose duties included giving public lectures to any members of the University. Provision was also made for up to twenty gentleman-commoners, provided they paid their way. Fortunately, no provision was made for founders’ kin. The statutes also provided for a Grammar School where sixteen choristers could be grounded in Latin. This was set up on the college property between the college itself and the city wall. From it there soon developed a new hall of residence, called Magdalen Hall like the previous one. This became closely linked to the college, particularly in the accommodation of undergraduates. Like Waynflete before him, Mayew became a powerful servant of the Crown, and was employed as Royal Almoner by Henry VII, who twice visited the college. He was sent to Spain to arrange the marriage between Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, and was later presented with Flemish tapestries commemorating the betrothal, which still hang in the college. Mayew was often away in London, and college discipline declined: but it was under Mayew that the Great Tower was built and that many further benefactions were made to the college, by now the richest in Oxford and a major landowner in Southern England. This prosperity was for a short time matched by an intellectual activity which placed Magdalen at the forefront of the New Learning. Magdalen provided the first President of Corpus Christi and the First Dean of Cardinal College. Wolsey had himself been a fellow of Magdalen for some ten years, serving as bursar and Dean of Divinity. Another future Cardinal, Reginald Pole, had resided as a gentleman-commoner. Magdalen suffered more than other colleges during the Reformation due to a party of extreme Protestants among the younger fellows, supported by undergraduates of Magdalen Hall (John Foxe had been a fellow, and William Tyndale had been at the Hall). They stripped the chapel of its altars, ornaments and organ, and made life intolerable for the moderate Owen Oglethorpe (President 1535-52 and 1553-55). But fortunately the college succeeded in resisting an attempt to suppress the Grammar School, thanks to powerful support for it from the townsfolk of Oxford. Following the brief Marian reaction, Magdalen retained its Puritan reputation throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, for most of it under Lawrence Humphrey (1561-88), a learned Calvinist though a poor administrator. College affairs got out of hand and the number of undergraduates increased excessively; and scandal was caused when a group of commoners stoned the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Norris, from the top of the tower, in revenge for the imprisonment of an undergraduate for poaching. In early Stuart times, although John Hampden was a commoner, the college swung round to Church and King, especially after the election of Accepted Frewen (1626-44). The grandeur and wealth of the college had always attracted important visitors, and Prince Henry, eldest son of James I, was received in state when aged twelve. The King his father declared that Magdalen was ‘the most absolute building in Oxford’. The college’s loyalty was soon put severely to the test. Besides sharing the fate of other colleges in surrendering its plate and enduring the siege, Magdalen, because of its position, found itself converted into a sort of fortress outside the city, with missiles in the tower and artillery in the grove and cavalry in the buildings, which probably served as Prince Rupert’s headquarters. Mercifully, the city fell without a fight. Under the Commonwealth the President and a third of the Fellows were expelled, but many were restored with the Monarchy in 1660. Tension between the restored Fellows and the others soured the college for some time, but things settled down under Henry Clerke (1671-86). Henry Clerke was a layman who had been ‘recommended’ by the Crown. So when he died in office it was not surprising that James II should have recommended a successor who was likewise technically disqualified under the terms of the statutes, as not being a Fellow of Magdalen or New College (and further disqualified under the law, as being a Roman Catholic). What emboldened the fellows to reject Anthony Farmer, however, was his very disreputable character, and in this they were supported by the Visitor, Peter Mews, Bishop of Winchester. After unsuccessfully petitioning for an alternative candidate they proceeded to elect one of their own number, John Hough. The Crown rejected the validity of this election, and now proposed the election of Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford, as President. Though James II backed this up by personally bullying the Fellows, they refused to renounce Hough. So a Royal Commission arrived at Magdalen in October 1687, and during a tense session in the senior common-room the Fellows were nearly all expelled and deprived of their livelihoods. The Fellows of Magdalen would not have taken their defiance so far had it not been for a groundswell of University opinion that rapidly grew against the autocratic rule of James II, and the grievances of Magdalen symbolized those of many others. Shortly before he was toppled in the following year, the King allowed the Visitor to restore Hough and the Fellows in October 1688. Magdalen was now the most famous college in Oxford, and gained several remarkable new members in the ‘Golden Election’ of 1689, among them Joseph Addison and Henry Sacheverell. But by the mid-eighteenth century it had settled into the lethargy which characterised the University at the time, and though there were always some conscientious Fellows, the tenor of their lives was uncomfortably close to the strictures of Edward Gibbon on his year as a gentleman-commoner aged sixteen: ‘From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience; and the first shoots of learning and ingenuity withered on the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the public’.