"Sing sweetly, blessed babes that suck the breast
Of this sweet nectar-dropping Magdalen,
Their praise in holy hymns, by whom ye feast,
The God of gods and Waynflete, best of men,
Sing in an union with the Angel's quires,
Sith Heaven's your house."
SIR J. DAVIES.
Magdalen College was founded by William of Waynflete, Bishop of
Winchester, who had been a faithful minister of Henry VI. He had
served as both Master and Provost of the King's own college at Eton
(and also as Master of Winchester College before), and from Eton he
brought the lilies which still figure in the Magdalen shield. As a
member of the Lancastrian party, he fell into disgrace when the
Yorkists triumphed, but he made his peace with Edward IV, whose
statue stands over the west door of the chapel, with those of St.
Mary Magdalene, St. John the Baptist, St. Swithun (Bishop of
Winchester), and the Founder. And the Tudors were equally friendly to
the new foundation; Prince Arthur, Henry VIII's unfortunate elder
brother, was a resident in Magdalen on two occasions, and the College
has still a splendid memorial of him in the great contemporary
tapestry, representing his marriage with Catharine of Aragon.
To the very early days of Magdalen belongs its connection with the
Oxford Reform Movement and the Revival of Learning. Both Fox and
Wolsey, successively Bishops of Winchester, and the munificent
founders of Corpus and of Cardinal (i.e. Christ Church) Colleges,
were members of Waynflete's foundation, and so probably was John
Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, whose learning and piety so impressed
Erasmus. "When I listen to my beloved Colet," he writes in 1499, "I
seem to be listening to Plato himself"; and he asks--why go to Italy
when Oxford can supply a climate "as charming as it is healthful" and
"such culture and learning, deep, exact and worthy of the good old
times ?" Erasmus' praise of Oxford climate is unusual from a
foreigner; the more usual view is that of his friend Vives, who came
to Oxford soon after as a lecturer at the new college of Corpus
Christi; he writes from Oxford: "The weather here is windy, foggy and
damp, and gave me a rough reception."
Colet's lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, perhaps delivered in
Magdalen College, marked an epoch in the way of the interpretation of
Holy Scripture, by their freedom from traditional methods and by
their endeavour to employ the best of the New Learning in determining
the real meaning of the Apostle. To the same school as Colet in the
Church belonged Reginald Pole, Archbishop in the gloomy days of Queen
Mary, the only Magdalen man who has held the See of Canterbury.
Elizabeth visited the College, and gently rebuked the Puritan
tendencies of the then President, Dr. Humphrey, who carried his
scruples so far as to object to the academical scarlet he had to wear
as a Doctor of Divinity, because it savoured of the "Scarlet Woman."
"Dr. Humphrey," said the queen, with the tact alike of a Tudor
sovereign and of a true woman, "methinks this gown and habit become
you very well, and I marvel that you are so strait-laced on this
point--but I come not now to chide." This President complained that
his headship was "more payneful than gayneful," a charge not usually
brought against headships at Oxford.
In the seventeenth century, Magdalen was, for a short time, the very
centre of England's interest. James II, in his desire to force Roman
Catholicism on Oxford, tried to fill the vacant Presidency with one
of his co-religionists. His first nominee was not only disqualified
under the statutes, but was also a man of so notoriously bad a
character that even the king had to drop him. Meanwhile, the fellows,
having waited, in order to oblige James, till the last possible
moment allowed by the statutes, filled up the vacancy by electing one
of their own number, John Hough. When the king pronounced this
election irregular and demanded the removal of the President and the
acceptance of his second nominee, the fellows declared themselves
unable thus to violate their statutes, even at royal command, and
were accordingly driven out. The "demies," who were offered
nominations to the fellowships thus rendered vacant, supported their
seniors, and, in their turn, too, were driven out; they had showed
their contempt for James' intruded fellows by "cocking their hats" at
them, and by drinking confusion to the Pope. When the landing of
William of Orange was threatening, James revoked all these arbitrary
proceedings, but it was too late; he had brought home, by a striking
example, to Oxford and to England, that no amount of past services,
no worthiness of character, no statutes, however clear and binding,
were to weigh for a moment with a royal bigot, who claimed the power
to "dispense" with any statutes. The "Restoration" of the Fellows on
October 25, 1688, is still celebrated by a College Gaudy, when the
toast for the evening is /jus suum cuique/.
Hough remained President for thirteen years, during most of which
time he was bishop--first of Oxford and then of Lichfield. He finally
was translated to Worcester, where he died at the age of ninety-
three, after declining the Archbishopric of Canterbury. His monument,
in his cathedral, records his famous resistance to arbitrary
authority.
Magdalen in the eighteenth century has an unenviable reputation,
owing to the memoirs of its most famous historian, Edward Gibbon, who
matriculated, in 1752, and who describes the fourteen months which
elapsed before he was expelled for becoming a Roman Catholic, "as the
most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." The "Monks of
Magdalen," as he calls the fellows, "decent, easy men," "supinely
enjoyed the gifts of the founder." It should be added that Gibbon was
not quite fifteen when he entered the College, and that his picture
of it is no doubt coloured by personal bitterness. But its
substantial justice is admitted. Certainly, nothing could be feebler
than the /Vindication of Magdalen College/, published by a fellow
James Hurdis, the Professor of Poetry; his intellectual calibre may
perhaps be gauged from the exquisite silliness of his poem, "The
Village Curate," of which the following lines, addressed to the
Oxford heads of houses, are a fair specimen:
"Ye profound
And serious heads, who guard the twin retreats
Of British learning, give the studious boy
His due indulgence. Let him range the field,
Frequent the public walk, and freely pull
The yielding oar. But mark the truant well,
And if he turn aside to vice or folly,
Show him the rod, and let him feel you prize
The parent's happiness, the public good."
Magdalen might fairly claim that a place so beautiful as it is,
justifies itself by simply existing, and the perfection of its
buildings and the beauty of its music must appeal, even to our own
utilitarian age. But it has many other justifications besides its
beauty; its great wealth is being continually applied to assist the
University by the endowment of new professorships, especially for the
Natural Sciences, and to aid real students, whether those who have
made, or those who are likely to make, a reputation as researchers.
It is needless to mention names: every Oxford man and every lover of
British learning knows them.
[Plate XIV. Magdalen College : The Open-Air Pulpit]
For the world in general, which cares not for research, the success
of the College under its present President, Sir Herbert Warren,
himself at once a poet and an Oxford Professor of Poetry, will be
evidenced by its increase in numbers and by its athletic successes.
They will judge as our King judged when he chose Magdalen for the
academic home of the Prince of Wales. The Prince, unlike other royal
persons at Magdalen and elsewhere, lived (1912-14) not in the
lodgings of the President, or among dons and professors, but in his
own set of rooms, like any ordinary undergraduate. He showed, in
Oxford, that power of self-adaptation which has since won him golden
opinions in the great Dominion and the greater Republic of the West.