Further additions were soon made to the original foundation. In 1636 King Charles I., who in that year visited Oxford “with no applause,” gave the College the patronage[322] of St. Aldate’s, which had been seized by the Crown on the dissolution of the religious houses. With a view to raising the state of ecclesiastical learning in the Channel Islands, King Charles further founded a Fellowship, as also at Jesus College and Exeter, to be held by a native of Guernsey or Jersey. Bishop Morley, in the next reign, bestowed five exhibitions for Channel islanders. A principal benefactor to this College was Sir J. Benet, Lord Ossulstone. In 1714 Queen Anne annexed a prebend at Gloucester to the Mastership. The Master, under the latest statutes, must be a person capable in law of holding this stall. Other considerable benefactions have from time to time been bestowed.
The new foundation, however, was not disposed to forego any portion of what it could claim. Savage, Master of Balliol, whose “Balliofergus” (1668) contains the account of the opening ceremony called “Natalitia Collegii Pembrochiani,” 1624, complains with pardonable resentment: “This rejeton had no sooner taken root than the Master and his company called the Master and Society of our Colledge into Chancery for the restitution of the aforesaid £300” (the £300, viz. of Tesdale’s money with which Cæsar’s Lodgings had been purchased). Wood says: “The matter came before George [Abbot] Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime of Balliol College, who, knowing very well that the Society was not able at that time to repay the said sum, bade the fellows go home, be obedient to their Governour, and Jehovah Jireh, i. e. God shall provide for them. Whereupon he paid £50 of the said £300 presently, and for the other £250 the College gave bond to be paid yearly by several sums till the full was satisfied. The which sums as they grew due did the Lord Archbishop pay.” Abbot seems to have allowed the agreement between the Mayor and burgesses of Abingdon and Balliol. Yet his attitude towards Pembroke, in whose foundation he was concerned, was one of marked benevolence. It is to be noted that Tesdale’s brass in Glympton Church, put up between his death and the new turn of affairs brought about by Wightwick’s benefaction, describes him as “liberally beneficial to Balliol Colledge in Oxford.” He is represented standing on an ale-cask, in allusion to his trade as maltster. The alabaster monument to Tesdale and Maud his wife was repaired in 1704, as a Latin inscription shows, by the Master and Fellows of Pembroke.
Part of the founders’ money was laid out in building. Few Colleges stand within a more natural boundary of their own than Pembroke, and yet that boundary has only been completed within the last two years, and the College itself is an almost accidental agglomeration of ancient tenements. The south side stands directly on the city wall from South Gate to Little Gate, looking down on a lane for a long time past called Brewer’s Street, but formerly Slaughter Lane, or Slaying Well Lane, King Street, and also Lumbard[323] Lane. The western boundary of the College is Littlegate Street, the eastern St. Aldate’s Street (formerly Fish Street), the northern Beef Lane and S. Aldate’s Church, though the College owns some interesting old houses on the south side of Pembroke Street, formerly Crow Street and Pennyfarthing[324] Street. At the time of the transformation of Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College, the “Almshouses” opposite Christ Church Gate were an appendage to Christ Church. Then came the vacant strip of ground called “Hamel,” running north and south. Next on the west stood New College Chambers and Abingdon Buildings, which passed with Broadgates into Pembroke. Beckyngton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was once Principal here. Further west still stood Broadgates Hall, the sole part of which still remaining is the refectory, now the library. As depicted in the large Agas (1578) it seems to have been an irregular cluster of buildings (mostly rented), of which the largest was a double block called Cambye’s, afterwards Summaster’s, Lodgings (vulgarly Veale Hall). This in 1626 was altered for the new Master’s Lodgings, but in 1695 it was replaced by a six-gabled freestone pile, the outside of which was remodelled with the rest of the frontage in 1829, a storey being added later by Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough. Loggan’s print shows the old building in 1675, and Burghersh gives its appearance in 1700, as rebuilt by Bishop Hall.
Broadgates Hall (except the refectory), together with Abingdon Buildings and New College Chambers, gave place, when Pembroke College had been founded, to the present Old Quadrangle, of which the south and west sides and a portion of the east side were erected in 1624, the remainder of the east side in 1670. Three years later the original north frontage, which had been merely repaired in 1624, was half pulled down and replaced by “a fair fabrick of freestone.” The rest of the north front as far as the Common Gate was rebuilt by Michaelmas 1691, the Gate Tower in 1694, Sir John Benet supplying most of the cost. This tower of 1694, the last part of the frontage to be built, was more classical than the remainder. The tower shown in Loggan’s print (1675) in the centre of the front can never have existed. Probably it was projected only. A storey was added in 1829, when the exterior of the College was remodelled in the Gothic revival manner of George IV. The interior of the quadrangle, though less altered than the outside, has lost much of its character by being refaced with inferior stone, and by the substitution of sashes for the quarried lights. Some changes were made in the battlements and chimneys, and in the upper face of the tower by Mr. Bodley in 1879.
The history of the present New Quadrangle is as follows: West of the present Master’s lodging stood a number of ancient halls for legists, viz. Minote, Durham (later St. Michael’s) and St. James’ (these two in one) and Beef Halls. The last gives its name to Beef Lane. Dunstan Hall, on the town wall, was (temp. Charles I.) pulled down, and the whole space between the city wall and the “Back Lodgings,” as the halls fringing Beef Lane were called, was divided into three enclosures. That furthest to the west became a garden for the Fellows, having a bowling alley, clipt walks and arbours,[325] and a curious dial. The middle enclosure was the Master’s garden, and here were shady bowers and a ball court. That nearest the College was a common garden; but when the chapel was built in 1728 the pleasant borders probably got trampled, and grass and trees were replaced by gravel. Such was, with little alteration, the aspect of the College till 1844. Two woodcuts in Ingram (1837) show the picturesque old gabled Back Lodgings still standing. But in 1844 Dr. Jeune took in hand the erection of new buildings. The new hall and kitchens occupy the western side, and the Fellows’ and undergraduates’ rooms the entire north side of the Inner Quadrangle thus formed, a large plat of grass filling the central space, while the chapel and a tiny strip of private garden upon the town wall form the south side. With the irregular range of old buildings on the east, and especially when the luxuriant creepers dress the walls with green and crimson, this is a very pleasing court, though a visitor looking in casually through the outer gateway of the College might hardly suspect its existence. Mr. Hayward of Exeter, nephew and pupil of Sir C. Barry, was the architect. The Hall, built in 1848, is a much better example of the Gothic revival than a good many other Oxford edifices, and the dark timbered roof is exceedingly handsome. There is the usual large oriel on the daïs, a minstrels’ gallery, and a great baronial fireplace, where huge blocks of fuel burn. As in the ancient halls, the twin doors are faced by the buttery hatches, and the kitchen is below.
The time-honoured hall, much the oldest part of the College, and once the refectory of Broadgates (the kitchen was in the S.W. corner of the Old Quadrangle) was now made the College Library. The long room over Docklington’s aisle in St. Aldate’s was on the foundation of Pembroke repaired at Dr. Clayton’s expense, and used once more for the reception of books presented by various donors, though Wood says that for some years before the Great Rebellion it was partly employed for chambers. The books certainly were at first few. Francis Rous, one of Cromwell’s “lords” and Speaker of the Little Parliament, who founded an Exhibition, “did intend to give his whole Study, but being dissuaded to the contrary gave only his own works and some few others.” But in 1709 Bishop Hall, Master of Pembroke, bequeathed his collection of books to the College, and a room was built over the hall to be the College library. When the hall became the library in 1848 this room, Gothicized, was converted to a lecture-room. From 1709 the “chamber in St. Aldate’s” was used no more, and this extremely ancient Civil Law School and picturesque feature of the church has now unhappily been demolished. A Nuremburg Chronicle among Dr. Hall’s books is inscribed by Whitgift’s hand, and a volume of scholia on Aristotle has the autograph, “Is. Casaubonus.” Here also are Johnson’s deeply pathetic Prayers and Meditations, in his own writing.
The Pembroke library has recently been fortunate enough to acquire by gift from a lady to whom they were bequeathed[326] the unique collection of Aristotelian and other works made by the late Professor Chandler, Fellow of the College, and galleries were added last year (1890). The transverse portion of the room, which is shaped like the letter T, was built in 1620 by Dr. Clayton, four years before Broadgates Hall became Pembroke College. A book of contributors (headed “Auspice Christo”) is extant, and has the signatures of Pym and of “Margaret Washington of Northants,” kinswoman of the famous Virginian.
In 1824, on the occasion of the “Bicentenary” of the College, when Latin speeches were delivered, the windows were enlarged and filled with glass by Eginton, and the blazoned cornice added at a cost of £2000. But the room is the same one in which Johnson (whose bust by Bacon is here) dined and abused the “coll,” or small beer, which he found muddy and uninspiring to Latin themes—
“Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae?
Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat.”