MAGDALEN COLLEGE
[Original]
WILLIAM OF WAYNFLETE, who founded this College, was brought up in the traditions of William of Wykeham, and maintained them most worthily. A member of Wykeham's school, and perhaps of New College, he became Headmaster of Winchester, only leaving it to act as first Headmaster of Eton, on the foundation of that College by Henry VI. Like Wykeham he lived through troubled times, and like him occupied the see of Winchester and was Chancellor of England. The latter post he resigned in the last year of Henry VI., but remained Bishop of Winchester until his death in 1486. He was buried in Winchester Cathedral, where eighty-two years earlier Wykeham had been laid to rest.
On the present site of Magdalen College stood an old hospital, named after St. John the Baptist. This hospital, with its grounds, was made over to William of Waynflete in 1457; some remains of its buildings still survive in what is known as the Chaplains' Quadrangle; and in this hospital the new society found temporary shelter. Waynflete did not proceed at once to build his new College; the times were disturbed, and with the victory of the Yorkist faction he found himself in some peril. Pardoned, however, by Edward IV., he was at liberty to carry out his designs. If not his own architect, he certainly superintended the building; and with the exception of the famous Tower, the work was completed before his death.
In the result, taste has generally decided, what most visitors feel instinctively at first sight, that Magdalen is the most beautiful College in Oxford. This distinction it owes partly to the perfect proportions of its buildings, and partly to the loveliness of its surroundings. To assure oneself of this, one may take a boat up the Cherwell (as the people in Mr. Matthison's first drawing have done), and, while the sculls rest idly on the water's surface, drink deeply of the beauty of the scene.