Wadham, during this same period, completed its material fabric by receiving the gift of the large east window of the chapel from Sir John Strangways, the founder’s nephew; it was made on the premises by Bernard van Ling, and the total cost was £113 17s. 5d. (including the maker’s battels for ten months and a week—£2 17s. 8d.).
The Civil War affected Wadham as it did the rest of the University. Its plate disappeared as has been said, only the Communion plate (“donum fundatricis”) being spared; its students were largely displaced to make room for the King’s supporters, among whom the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Herbert, seems to have made Wadham a kind of family residence. After the final defeat of the King, the Warden, Pytt, and the great majority of the Foundation were deprived by the Parliamentary Commissioners. But it may be fairly said that the changes made did far more good than harm to the College. The man appointed to the vacant Wardenship was the famous John Wilkins, divine, philosopher, and mathematician, who enjoyed the almost unique honour of being promoted by the Parliament, by Richard Cromwell, and by Charles II., and to whom the College owes the honour of being the cradle of the Royal Society. Evelyn records in his Diary (July 13th, 1654), how “we all dined at that most obliging and universally-curious Dr. Wilkins’s, at Wadham Coll.”—and speaks of the wonderful contrivances and curiosities, scientific and mechanical, which he saw there. Round Wilkins gathered the society of learned men who had previously begun to meet in London, and who were afterwards incorporated as the Royal Society. The historian of that famous body, Dr. Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester and himself a member of the Foundation of Wadham College, records[312] how “the first meetings were made in Dr. Wilkins his lodgings, in Wadham College, which was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men,” and that from their meetings came the great advantage, that “there was a race of young men provided against the next age, whose minds receiving their first impressions of sober and generous knowledge were invincibly armed against all the encroachments of enthusiasm.” The traditional place of these meetings is the great room over the gateway, though this is more than doubtful. Of the original members, there belonged to Wadham College, besides Wilkins—Richard Napier, Seth Ward, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, the famous mathematician; and last but not least, that “prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren,” who after being a Fellow Commoner at Wadham College, was elected Fellow of All Souls, and who showed his affection for his original College by the present of the College clock and a beautiful sugar-castor, of which the latter is still in daily use, while the face, at any rate, of the former remains in its old place. The works of the clock are preserved in the ante-chapel as a curiosity.
Warden Wilkins had for two hundred years the distinction of being the only married Warden of Wadham. His wife was a sister of the Lord Protector, with whom he had great influence, which he used for the benefit of the University as a whole, and of individual Royalists. Anthony Wood seems mistaken in saying that Wilkins owed his dispensation to marry to his connection with Cromwell. The original MS. in the possession of the College bears date January 20th, 1652 (four years before Wilkins actually married), and comes from the Visitors of the University of Oxford. Of both Wren and Wilkins there are portraits in the Hall.
The most distinguished undergraduates of this period were John, Lord Lovelace, who took a prominent part in the Revolution (a fine portrait of him by Laroon hangs in the College hall), William Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and one of the famous “Seven Bishops,” and the notorious Mr. Charles Sedley, a donor of plate to the College, all of whom matriculated in 1655. An even better known member of Wadham was John Wilmot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who matriculated in 1659, immediately after Warden Wilkins had been promoted to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge; but as he proceeded to his M.A. in September 1661, being then well under fourteen, he probably did not give much trouble to the disciplinary authorities. John Mayow too, the distinguished physician and chemist, who became scholar in 1659, continued the scientific traditions of the College.
Wilkins and three of his four successors all became Bishops; of these the most famous was Ironside, who, as Vice-Chancellor in 1688, ventured to oppose James II. in his arbitrary proceedings against Magdalen. The fall of James saved Ironside, who was made Bishop of Bristol (and afterwards of Hereford) by William III., and was succeeded by Warden Dunster, the object of Thomas Hearne’s hatred and contempt. He accuses him[313] of being “one of the violentest Whigs and most rascally Low Churchmen” of the time, and of various other defects, physical and moral, which may perhaps be conjectured to be in Hearne’s mind convertible terms with the above.
Wadham as a whole during this period was strongly Whig and Low Church; not improbably this was due to its close connection with the West country, where the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion had taught men to hate the Stuarts; but whatever the reason, the fact is undoubted. Probably there is no other College hall in England which boasts of portraits both of the “Glorious Deliverer” and of George I.
As might be expected, Hearne’s account of the College is extremely black. He dwells on the blasphemies[314] for which a certain Mr. Bear of Wadham was refused his degree; and even the distinguished scholar, Dr. Hody, the Regius Professor of Greek and Archdeacon of Oxford, is continually attacked by him, though he admits “he was very useful.”[315] Hody, both in his life and by his will, showed himself a loyal son of his College. Dying at the early age of forty-six, he bequeathed the reversion of his property to Wadham, for the encouragement of Hebrew and Greek studies; and the ten exhibitions he founded (now made into four scholarships) have been especially successful in developing the study of the former language. A far greater scholar than Hody belongs in part to Wadham at the same period. In 1687 Richard Bentley was incorporated M.A. of Oxford from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and put his name on the books of Wadham. He was in Oxford as tutor to the son of Bishop Stillingfleet.
Almost to the same period belong the buildings erected on the south side of the College (No. IX. staircase), which were begun in 1693, and finished next year; it was intended to build a similar block on the north side, beyond the Warden’s lodgings, as is shown in some old prints, but this was never carried out. I am unable to assign a date to No. X. staircase. It certainly belonged to the College before the final purchase of the staircase next the King’s Arms (No. XI.), which was made early in the present century: there exists a drawing of it in a much earlier style of architecture than the present, or than that of No. IX.
The only other person worthy of special mention connected with the College at this period, was Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons throughout the reign of George II., who matriculated in 1708; his affection for Wadham is illustrated by the splendid service-books presented by him to the chapel, while two excellent portraits show the pride which the College felt in him.