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Introduction Introduction It had been a long and frustrating day, one that Bernard Gardiner, Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, was no doubt glad to have behind him. Spending a mid-December night in 1709 at the Catherine Wheel in Wycombe (north- west of London), Gardiner, who was feeling ill, wished for nothing more than a quiet rest before continuing his journey from Lambeth Palace back to his college. While in the drier months of summer travel between Oxford and London could be accomplished in about thirteen hours, in winter nearly two days were required to complete the excursion.1 Reluctantly, he made the trip south to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, to discuss the case of two fellows of All Souls who refused to take holy orders, a condition of their fellowships as stipulated in the college statutes. The warden argued his position with a great deal of vigour, but feared he had not convinced Teni- son to maintain a strict interpretation of the statutes. Now all he wanted was sleep. It was not to be. Unknown to Gardiner several fellows, also returning from Lambeth where they witnessed the proceedings, similarly chose to stay at the Catherine Wheel. When the fellows learned that the warden shared their accommodations, they took the room next to his and hosted a loud party with music and dancing. The festivities continued long into the night and refused to be silenced even after the proprietor of the establishment, Mrs. Blacknall, pleaded with the fellows that Gardiner was not well and had asked for some consideration. When the sleep-deprived Gardiner finally arrived back in Oxford he immediately dispatched a letter to Tenison complaining profusely at the treatment he had received from the fellows of All Souls.2 The events that led to this incident and those that followed are the sub- jects of this book. As will be made clear in the following pages, the trials and tribulations of this mostly forgotten college warden in his attempts to bring the fellows of All Souls under his authority (approximately between 1708–19) in the face of political interest and sometimes interference reflect three tre- mendously important concerns that encompassed England during the early years of the eighteenth century. Firstly, the most significant of these, is the memory of James ii and the Revolution of 1688. Throughout this book, I will attempt to show how All Souls and its warden Gardiner were caught between 1 W.N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, Oxford in the Age of John Locke (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 40. 2 Appeals and Visitors’ Injunctions, vol. 1, fol. 85. Bernard Gardiner to Archbishop Tenison, 16 December 1709; Catalogue of the Archives, 334. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi �0.��63/978900437535�_00� <UN> 2 Introduction competing visions of what England, and consequently Oxford, would look like following 1688.3 Here I am interested in the implications of the Revolution, specifically the increased role of Parliament in administering the nation and growing centralization of governance in England, for the eighteenth-century interactions between All Souls and the crown, which provide a lens through which Gardiner’s experiences are seen and brought into focus. While more than two decades had passed since William stepped onto England’s shore at Torbay on 5 November 1688, and James ii’s flight to France on 23 December of the same year, the ripples of these events had not ceased. The results of the Revolution were neither finalized nor were they completely accepted in many circles. This was certainly the case in the tremendously conservative environment—both politically and religiously—of All Souls. Often accounts of the Glorious Revolution include Oxford only when discussing James ii’s ac- tions at Magdalen College and how his meddling in that college’s election was one of the reasons for William’s arrival.4 But as I argue in this book, conflicting views of the revolutionary settlement were important factors in the running of All Souls while Gardiner was warden and that close attention to such localities adds to our understanding of this defining event in English history.5 Secondly, combined with this indeterminate political inheritance, was the infamous trial of Dr Henry Sacheverell in 1710 for his scandalous sermon and the result- ing resurgence of the Tory traditional vision of church and state that found a receptive audience at All Souls and emboldened Gardiner’s management of his college. Thirdly, the death of Queen Anne and subsequent succession of George i in 1714 caused many issues for Gardiner, as it did for Oxford gener- ally. Gardiner’s conservatism that had been an asset following 1710 would now 3 While the exact meaning of 1688 continues to be debated among historians, a growing con- sensus sees it as a true revolution and a pivotal moment in British history. For a summary of historiographical assessments, see Stephen Taylor, “Afterward: State Formation, Political Stability and the Revolution of 1688,” in The Final Crisis of the Stuart Monarchy: The Revolu- tions of 1688–91 in their British, Atlantic and European Contexts, ed. Tim Harris and Stephen Taylor (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), 273–304. 4 See for example, G.M. Trevelyan, The English Revolution 1688–1689 (1938; London: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1963), 70–72; J.R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1972); W.A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 65, 144, 155, 232; Steven Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 173–176, 190, 261. 5 The need for studies of the local reception of the Revolution is seen in Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London: Penguin, 2006), 14; Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013), 248. <UN>.
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