Through the darkness and stagnation of the fifteenth century a few great men had handed on the torch of learning and of educational ideals. The pedigree of Christ Church is clearly traceable through Magdalen and New College back to Merton. Wolsey at Magdalen had learnt to appreciate, in the most beautiful of all the homes of learning, something of the aims of the great school-master bishop, Waynflete. And Waynflete himself, can we doubt? had caught from Wykeham the enthusiasm for producing “rightly and nobly ordered minds and characters.” At Oxford, at Winchester and at Windsor he had lived under the shadow of the great monuments of Wykeham’s genius, and learned to discern “the true nature of the beautiful and graceful, the simplicity of beauty in style, harmony and grace.” So that in the architecture of his college—and Architecture, as Plato tells us, as all the other Arts, is full of grace and harmony, which are the two sisters of goodness and virtue—he was enabled to fulfil the Platonic ideal and to provide the youth whom he desired to benefit with a home where they might dwell “in a land of health and fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything, and where beauty, the effluence of fair works, might flow into the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.” Inspired by such examples, Wolsey set himself to build a college which should eclipse them,
“Though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art and yet so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.”
Indeed, says Fuller, nothing mean could enter into this man’s mind.
Immense as were his private resources, they could not bear the strain of his magnificent plans. He therefore seized upon the idea of appropriating the property of the regular clergy and applying it to the foundation and endowment of Cardinal’s College. The time was ripe for some such conversion. Monasticism was outworn. Whatever the merits of some few monasteries might be, whatever the piety of an occasional Abbot Samson, or the popularity of a monkish institution which did its duty of charity and instruction in this or that part of the country, the monks as a rule had ceased to live up to their original standard. They had accumulated wealth and lost their hold on the people. And where they were popular, it was in many cases with the people they had pauperised. To a statesman with so keen an insight and so broad a mind as Wolsey, it must have seemed both wise and safe to take this opportunity of suppressing some of the English priories. Had not Chicheley, when the alien priories had been suppressed on political grounds, secured some of their lands for the endowment of his foundation, All Souls’ College?
His first step was to obtain a bull from the Pope and the assent of the King, authorising him (1524) to suppress the Priory of S. Frideswide and transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order. Their house and revenues, amounting to nearly £300, were assigned to the proposed college of secular clerks. The scale of that college is indicated by the fact that it was to consist of a dean and sixty canons, forty canons of inferior rank, besides thirteen chaplains, twelve lay clerks, sixteen choristers and a teacher of music, for the service of the Church. Six public professors were to be appointed in connection with the college.
A few months later another bull, which premised that divine service could not be properly maintained in monasteries which contained less than seven professed members, empowered Wolsey to suppress any number of such small religious houses all over the country. This he proceeded to do, and to transfer the inmates to other monasteries. Their revenues, to an amount not exceeding 3000 golden ducats, were to be devoted to the new college.
The plan of thus concentrating the resources of the small and scattered religious houses was both economical and statesmanlike. But, in its execution, it gave rise to fear and irritation, of which Wolsey’s political enemies were quick to avail themselves. The perturbation of the monks is well expressed in Fuller’s happy metaphor:
“His proceedings made all the forest of religious foundations in England to shake, justly fearing the King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood.”
Wolsey found it necessary to write to his royal master more than once to contradict the mis-representations of his opponents. The King had been informed that monks and abbots had been turned out to starve. Wolsey declared that what he had done was “to the full satisfaction, recompense and joyous contentation” of all concerned. The King complained that some of the monasteries would not contribute to his necessities as much as they had contributed to the Cardinal’s scheme. Wolsey replied that he had indeed received “from divers mine old lovers and friends right loving and favourable aids towards the edifying of my said College,” but added that these had been justly obtained and exaggerated in amount. But he promised in future to take nothing from any religious person.
Meantime he had set about building Cardinal’s College with extraordinary energy and on an enormous scale. The foundation stone was laid on 15th July 1525. Whilst the Chapter-house and refectory of the old monastery were kept, the western bays of the church were removed to make way for the great quadrangle. The Chapel of S. Michael at South Gate was demolished, and part of the old town wall was thrown down. Room was thus made for the buildings on the south side of the quadrangle. These, the first portion of the college to be finished, were the kitchen and that hall which, in its practical and stately magnificence, can scarcely be equalled in England or surpassed in Europe. But the fact that it was the kitchen and dining-room which first reached completion gave an opportunity to the wits.