"Almighty God I take to my record, I have not meant, intended, or gone about, ne also have willed mine officers, to do anything concerning the said suppressions, but under such form and manner as is and hath largely been to the full satisfaction, recompense, and joyous contentation of any person which hath had, or could pretend to have, right or interest in the same, in such wise that many of them, giving thanks and laud to God for the good chance succeeded unto them, would for nothing, if they might, return or be restored and put again in their former state, as your Highness shall abundantly and largely perceive at my next repairing unto the same.
"Verily, sir, I would be loth to be noted that I should intend such a virtuous foundation for the increase of your Highness' merit, profit of your subjects, the advancement of good learning, and for the weale of my poor soul, to be established or acquired ex rapinis."
It was indeed, says Mr. Maxwell Lyte, part of Wolsey's "grand and statesmanlike scheme of establishing episcopal sees in some of the larger monasteries, and annexing thereto smaller monasteries to provide greater revenues." The graduates of Oxford were very grateful, and promised to remember him in their prayers to the end of time; but great fear came over the monks. His proceedings, says Fuller quaintly but truly, "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."
Thus was Cardinal College founded. Its magnificence certainly made a great impression upon Englishmen, as is shown by the fact that it is the only existing college mentioned by Shakespeare. In Henry VIII. Wolsey is praised for his new foundation:—
"though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and yet so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue."
But all Wolsey's great buildings, and projects still greater, were stopped by his sudden fall in 1529. Three years afterwards "bluff Harry broke into the spence," and, placidly transferring the whole credit of the idea to himself, refounded Cardinal College with the title "King Henry VIII. his College." Then he suppressed his own foundation, and, on Nov. 4th, 1546, reconstituted it, adopting the novel and economical expedient of combining a cathedral with an academic college. The new style was Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon ex fundatione Regis Henrici octavi; so St. Frideswide's church, which had for seven years been the chapel of Cardinal College, and of King Henry's College for thirteen years, became at length the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and also the chapel of the college now at length called Christ Church, and presided over by the Dean of the cathedral. Ever since, the ancient church has had a two-fold character as cathedral church and college chapel; and "as the Dean of Christ Church is always present, and the Bishop of Oxford very seldom, academic usages and appearances rather prevail over the ecclesiastical, in a way that may have been the reverse of satisfactory to more than one occupant of the see of Oxford."
Wolsey had contemplated establishing a hundred canons; but Henry reduced the number at a stroke to twelve, and then to eight; later they were further reduced to six, which is the present number. Besides the canons, dean, and bishop, Henry's foundation included eight petty canons or chaplains, a gospeller and a postiller or bible-clerk, eight singing clerks, eight choristers and their master, a schoolmaster and an usher, an organist, sixty scholars or students, and forty "children," corresponding no doubt to the scholars of later days. Soon after, however, the whole scholastic part of the establishment was replaced by one hundred students, who (with the one "outcomer" of the Thurston foundation) are still nightly tolled by the hundred and one strokes of great Tom, this being the signal for college-gates to be closed all over Oxford.
Such was the arrangement of the new establishment, which, as the name of Ecclesia Christi was replaced by Ædes Christi, came to be called, according to the double use of the word æedes, both Christ Church and the House. The history of the see of Oxford, which was first set up at Oseney in 1542, will be found in another chapter.