organised college service. It was decided, and this is where the scout has the advantage of his forerunners, that they should be required to attend the Grammar School, and afterwards to perform all disputations and exercises required of members of the foundation. All commoners, also, “the sonnes of Noblemen and such as are of great quality only excepted” were to be “tyed to the same rules.”
Little more than a hundred years later Edward Gibbon matriculated at Magdalen (1752) as a “gentleman commoner,” and as a youth of fifteen commenced those fourteen months which he has told us were the most idle and unprofitable of his whole life. There are prigs of all ages. Gibbon must have been intolerable in a common room. One can forgive the “Monks of Magdalen” for not discussing the Early Fathers with him after dinner, but one has no inclination on the other hand to revere the men who had already (1733), in their enthusiasm for the Italian style, begun the “New Buildings,” and were still threatening to pull down the cloisters and to complete a large quadrangle in the same style, of which the New Buildings were to form one end. The damage done by the succeeding generation was directed chiefly against the chapel and the hall, where under the guidance of the outrageous James Wyatt, plaster ceilings were substituted for the old woodwork. The generosity of a late fellow has enabled Mr Bodley, with the aid of Professor Case, to repair this error by an extraordinarily interesting and successful restoration (1903). Magdalen Hall is now worthy of its pictures, its “linen-fold” panelling and splendid screen. Bitter as is the account which Gibbon has left us, it cannot be denied that there was much reason in his quarrel with the Oxford of his day. I say Oxford, for the state of Magdalen was better rather than worse than that of the University at large. It should, however, in fairness be pointed out that as a gentleman commoner in those days he was one of a class which was very small and far from anxious to avail itself of the intellectual advantages of a University training. The commoners at Magdalen were now very few in number. The founder’s limitation was now so interpreted as to restrict them to the particular class of gentlemen commoners, sons of wealthy men, at liberty to study, but expected to prefer, and as a matter of fact usually preferring, to enjoy themselves.
But the efforts of the more liberal-minded fellows were at length crowned with success. By the first University Commission the college was allowed to admit as many non-foundationers as it could provide with rooms. The last gentleman commoner had ceased to figure in the Calendar by 1860. The system of licensed lodgings introduced by the University soon caused the numbers of the ordinary commoners to increase, so that in 1875 one-third of the resident undergraduates were living in lodgings outside the college. It was clearly time for the college to provide accommodation for as many of these as possible within its own walls. The change which took place in Magdalen during the last century, a change “from a small society, made up almost wholly of foundation-members and to a great extent of graduates, to a society of considerable numbers, made up of the same elements, in about the same proportion as most of the other Colleges,” is recorded therefore in the architecture of Oxford. For it was to lodge the commoners that the buildings which are known as S. Swithun’s (so-called from the statue in a niche on the west side of the tower which is placed at the entrance of these buildings, and which reminds one that S. Swithun was buried in Winchester Cathedral close to the beautiful shrine of William of Waynflete) were designed by Messrs Bodley & Garner and completed in 1884. They face the High Street, and you will pass them on your left as you come down to the new entrance gateway, which is in the line of the outer wall, parallel to the High. The old gateway, which was designed by Inigo Jones, stood almost at right angles to the site of the present gateway and lodge, looking west. It was removed in 1844, and a new one designed by A. W. Pugin erected in its stead. The present gateway (1885) follows the lines of the old design of Pugin, and the niches are filled with statues of S. John the Baptist, S. Mary Magdalen and of the founder, William of Waynflete. S. John the Baptist was the patron Saint of the old hospital, and after S. John the quadrangle into which you now enter is called. Opposite to you are the President’s lodgings, built by Messrs Bodley & Garner in 1887 on the site of the old President’s lodgings. With the exquisite architecture of the chapel and cloisters on the right to guide them, these famous architects have not failed to build here something that harmonises in style and treatment with the rest. One might wish that S. Swithun’s were a little quieter. There is a slight yielding to the clamorous desire for fussy ornamentation which is so typical of this noisy age. But the President’s lodgings are perfect in their kind. As you stand, then, in S. John’s Quadrangle you have, in the chapel and founder’s tower, and the cloisters on your right, and in the picturesque old fragment of the Grammar School, known as the Grammar Hall, facing you on your left, an epitome, as it were, of the old college foundations of Oxford; and in those buildings of S. Swithun and the gateway, which faces in a new direction, an epitome of the new Oxford that has been grafted on the old. On the extreme right you see a curious open-air pulpit of stone, from which the University sermon used to be preached on S. John the Baptist’s Day. On that occasion the pulpit, as well as the surrounding buildings, was strewn with rushes and boughs in token of S. John’s preaching in the wilderness.