"But these were merciful men, whose righteousness
hath not been forgotten. . . . Their bodies are buried
in peace; but their name liveth for evermore."
/Ecclesiasticus/, xliv. 10, 14.
The collection of pictures In Wadham Hall is probably the best of any
college in Oxford--always, of course, excepting Christ Church. It has
no single picture to be compared with the "Thomas Warton" at
Trinity, or the "Dr. Johnson" at Pembroke (both excellent works of
Reynolds), nor does it give so many fine examples of the work of
recent artists as do Trinity or Balliol; but it makes up for these
deficiencies by the number and the variety of its pictures.
Two only of the men they represent can be said to attain to the first
rank among England's worthies--Robert Blake, second as an admiral
only to Nelson and Oxford's greatest fighting man until the present
war, and Christopher Wren, "that prodigious young scholar" (as John
Evelyn calls him), who, as has been well said, would have been second
only to Newton among English mathematicians had he not chosen rather
to be indisputably the first of British architects. It is interesting
to note that Wadham shares with All Souls' two of the greatest names
in the Scientific Revival of the seventeenth century: both Wren and
Thomas Sydenham, the physician, migrated from Wadham to fellowships
at All Souls'.
Their connection with Wadham is part of what is probably the most
interesting single episode in the college history. When the
Parliament triumphed, and the King's partisans were turned out of
Oxford, the Lodgings at Wadham were given to the most distinguished
of her Wardens, John Wilkins, who, no doubt, owed his promotion to
the fact that he was the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. In his
own day everyone knew him; he was a moderate man, who interceded for
Royalist scholars under the Commonwealth, and tempered the penal laws
to Non-Conformists, when later he was Bishop of Chester. He was even
better known to the "philosophers" as the inventor of a universal
language and as curious for every advance in Natural Science. But, in
our day, he is only remembered for his connection with the Royal
Society; that most illustrious body grew out of the meetings held
weekly at his Lodgings and the similar meetings held in London; when
later these two movements were united, Wilkins was secretary of the
committee which drew up the rules for their future organization, and
thus prepared the way for the Royal Charter, given to the Society in
1662. When the Royal Society celebrated its 250th anniversary in
1912, many of its members made a pilgrimage to "its cradle" (or what
was, at any rate, "/one/ of its cradles").
Wadham also produced, among other early members of the Royal Society,
its historian, Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who somehow, as
"Pindaric Sprat" (he was the friend and also the editor of /Abraham
Cowley/), found his way into Johnson's /Lives of the Poets/; he is,
however, more likely to be remembered because his subserviency, when
he was Dean of Westminster to James II, has earned him an unenviable
place in Macaulay's gallery of Revolution worthies and unworthies.
Sprat, it should be added, was an exception to the prevailing Whig
tradition of Wadham, which found a worthy exponent in Arthur Onslow,
the greatest Speaker of the House of Commons, who ruled over that
august body for a record period, thirty-four years (1727-1761), and
formed its rules and traditions in the period when it was first
asserting its claim to govern.
[Plate XXIII. Wadham College : The Hall Interior]
Two centuries later than the Royal Society days at Wadham, another
group of philosophers was trained there, who thought that the views
of their master, Auguste Comte, were going to make as great a
revolution in human thought as the views of a Bacon or a Newton. All
the leading English Positivists were at Wadham--Congreve, Beesley,
Bridges, Frederic Harrison, of whom the last alone survives, to fight
with undiminished vigour for the causes which he championed in Mid-
Victorian days. Positivism had less influence than its adherents
expected, but it powerfully affected for a time the political and the
religious thought of England.
Forty years later another famous group of young men were at Wadham
together. As they are all alive, it is impossible, and would be
unbecoming, to estimate what their influence on English life and
thought will be; but it was a curious coincidence that sent to Wadham
together, in the 'nineties, Lord Birkenhead, who reached the Woolsack
at the earliest age on record; Sir John Simon, who, if he had wished,
could have lowered that record still further, and C. B. Fry, once a
household name as the greatest of British athletes.
Three groups of Wadham men have been spoken of; one other name must
be mentioned of one who stood alone at college, and for a long time
in the world outside, in his attitude to the social problems of our
day. Whatever may be the future of the Settlement movement, its
leader, Samuel Barnett, "Barnett of Whitechapel," is not to be
forgotten, for his name is associated as a pioneer and an inspiring
force with every movement of educational and social advance in the
latter half of the nineteenth century. M. Clemenceau, no friendly
judge of the ministers of any religious body, pronounced him one of
the three greatest men he had met in England. Certainly he was great,
if greatness means to anticipate the problems of the future before
the rest of the world sees their urgency, and to make real
contributions to their solution.
It has been a feature of the history of Oxford that every college
has, from time to time, come to the front as the special home and
source of some movement. There has never been the overshadowing
concentration of men and of wealth, which has given a more one-sided
direction to the history of Cambridge. Hence the strength of the
college system; every college has its traditions to live up to, its
great names to cherish, and Wadham is, certainly, by no means last or
least in these respects.