Wadham College occupies an interesting position in the history of the University, as having been the last College founded until quite recent times, for both Pembroke and Worcester were but expansions of older foundations. Though actually dating from the reign of James I., it may be said to share with Jesus College the honour of belonging to the days of Elizabeth, as its founder and foundress were well advanced in years at the time when they carried out their long meditated plans, and both in the spirit which animates its statutes and in the architecture of its fabric, Wadham College belongs rather to the sixteenth than to the seventeenth century.
The founder of the College, Nicholas Wadham, of Merifeild, in the county of Somerset, belonged to one of the oldest and wealthiest of the untitled families of the West of England. He married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Petre, the well known benefactor of Exeter College, but having no children, he resolved to devote his great wealth to some pious use. Antony à Wood tells us that his original intention had been to found a College at Venice for English Romanists, but that he was persuaded to change his plans; the story[307] seems doubtful, and Nicholas Wadham at all events died in the Anglican communion. All his patrimonial estates went to his three sisters, who had married into some of the chief families of the West of England; but he had for some time past been accumulating money for his new foundation; and in two conversations held with his nephew and executor, Sir John Wyndham, very shortly before his death, he had given full directions as to many points in the College. Of these two were especially notable: he desired that the Warden as well as the Fellows should be unmarried; and also that each of them should be “left free to profess what he listed, as it should please God to direct him;” he did not wish them to “live thro’ all their time like idle drones, but put themselves into the world, whereby others may grow up under them.” He also arranged that the College should be called after his own name, and that the Bishop of Bath and Wells should be perpetual Visitor.
His widow and executors set to work at once to carry out his wishes, and the present site of the College was purchased from the city of Oxford for £600. It had formerly been occupied by the Augustinian Friars, whose name survived in the old phrase for degree exercises,[308] “doing Austins,” down to the beginning of this century. The foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on July 31st, 1610, and two years later the foundress, having some time previously obtained a charter from James I., put forth her statutes (August 16th, 1612). In these her husband’s wish was carried out by the provision that Fellows should resign their posts eighteen years after they had ceased to be regent masters: this provision remained in force down to the commission of 1854. Originally the Warden was not required to be in orders, but was allowed to proceed to his Doctorate in Law or Medicine as well as in Divinity; but the foundress was persuaded to alter her arrangements on this point, and the two former alternatives were struck out.
There were to be fifteen Fellows and fifteen scholars, the former being elected from among the latter; of these three scholars were to be from Somerset, and three from Essex, while three Fellowships and three scholarships were restricted to “founder’s kin.” These were originally intended for the children and descendants of the sisters above-mentioned, but in course of time it became frequent to trace kinship with the founder through collateral branches of the Wadham family. The buildings erected by the foundress are remarkable in more ways than one. Their architect, who is supposed to have been Holt[309] of York, the architect of the New Schools, was employed at several other Colleges in Oxford, e. g. at Merton, Exeter, Jesus, University, and Oriel. The resemblance between the inner quadrangle at the first of these and that of Wadham is very marked. Owing to the extent of the original design and the excellence of the building material employed, Wadham has the unique honour among the Colleges of Oxford of having remained practically unaltered since it left its foundress’ hands.
Of the various parts of the building the hall and the chapel are the most remarkable; the latter in the shape of its ante-chapel is a combination of the short nave found at New College and of transepts such as are found at Merton; while in the tracery of the windows of its choir it furnishes a continual puzzle to architectural theorists; for though undoubtedly every stone of it was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and though the wood-work is pure Jacobean, the windows both in their tracery and in their mouldings belong to a period one hundred and fifty years earlier. In fact the chapel is exactly one of the magnificent choirs with which the churches of Somerset abound, and it is difficult to believe that the resemblance is not more than accidental; for in the building documents of the College we have clear evidence of both materials and workmen coming from the county of the founder. The cost of the whole building was £11,360.
Even before it was finished, the new Foundation received a munificent present in the shape of the library of Dr. Philip Bisse, Archdeacon of Taunton, who dying about 1612 left some two thousand books (valued at £1700?); these books are all distinguished by having their titles carefully inscribed in black letter characters on the sides of their pages, near the top, and may be not unworthily compared to the famous library, the cataloguing of which made Dominie Sampson so happy a man. The foundress made Dr. Bisse’s nephew an original Fellow of her College, though he had not yet taken a degree, “Ob singularem amorem avunculi ejus,” and also had painted the portrait of the Archdeacon in full doctor’s robes, which still adorns the library.
On April 20th, 1613, the first Warden, Robert Wright, formerly Fellow of Trinity College and Canon of Wells, was admitted at St. Mary’s, and in the afternoon of the same day he in turn admitted the Fellows and scholars nominated by the foundress. Wright, however, very shortly resigned his position, because (says Wood) he was not allowed to marry.
The foundation of the College seems to have attracted considerable attention elsewhere than in Oxford. Among the State Papers in the year 1613 is calendared (somewhat incongruously) a parody of the statutes of Gotam College, founded by Sir Thomas à Cuniculis,[310] with a license from the Emperor of Morea; and from the first the number of men matriculated was very large, and the class from which they were drawn a wealthy one. This is most clearly proved by the fact that although the College had been in existence less than thirty years when the Civil War broke out, the amount of plate surrendered by it to the King was only surpassed by one other Foundation. The College still possesses an inventory of articles given, which make up “100 lbs. of white plate and 23 lbs. of gilt plate.” As might have been expected, a large proportion of the members of the College at this period, and for long after, came from the West country; two-thirds, probably, were from Dorset, Somerset, or Devon; and this connection has happily never been entirely broken. Among these West countrymen was the famous Admiral, Robert Blake, who graduated from Wadham in 1617 at the age of twenty, and was still in residence six years later. His portrait now hangs in the hall.
During this first period of College life, down to the outbreak of the rebellion, two events deserve a passing notice. The first of these was the fierce controversy[311] waged between James Harrington, one of the original Fellows, and the rest of the Foundation, as to his right to retain his place, although he possessed an annual pension of £40 a year. There are numerous references to this in the Calendar of State Papers; and Laud, as Bishop of Bath and Wells, was put to no small trouble to decide it. In the end Harrington apologized for “having behaved himself in gesture and speeches very uncivilly”; but the quarrel only ended with the expiration of his Fellowship in 1631. Much more important was the attempt of King James, in 1618, to obtain a Fellowship for William Durham of St. Andrews, “notwithstanding anie thing in your statutes to the contrarie.” Unfortunately we know very little about this early parallel to James II.’s attempt at Magdalen; but the College clearly was successful in upholding its rights.
It is perhaps not altogether fanciful to trace the feelings of the College as to James I. in the register next year (1619), when its usual dry formality is given up, and Carew Ralegh the son of the King’s late victim, is entered as “fortissimi doctissimique equitis Gualteri Ralegh filius.”