[304] This chair was made the pattern of the chairs in the Bursary.
[305] Alfred George Edwards, Bishop of St. Asaph, 1889. Daniel Lewis Lloyd, Bishop of Bangor, 1890.
[306] There is a trivial but well-known story that the College is to present this piece of plate to whoever first fairly encircles it at its widest with his arms, but that from the shape and actual girth (5 ft. 2 in.) this feat has rarely been accomplished. A second task has, however, been kept in reserve; that the winner should drain it filled with the strong punch for which it was designed, and then be able himself to remove it; it holds ten gallons.
[307] Wood quotes no authority, and his story of the founder’s intentions is inconsistent in one or two points with the curious old (though not contemporary) MS. account of the last wishes of the founder, which is among the papers of Wadham College. Dorothy Wadham, however, was certainly a Recusant not long before her death (cf. Calendar of State Papers, 1619-1623, p. 330); it may perhaps be conjectured that the atrocity of the Gunpowder Plot alienated her husband from his co-religionists, and induced him to conform to the National Church.
[308] A statute of 1268 directed that every B.A. should dispute against the Austin Friars once a year in the interval between his taking that degree and proceeding M.A. Although these disputations were removed to St. Mary’s Church, and afterwards to the Natural Philosophy School, they retained the name “Austin Disputations.” See Wood’s City of Oxford (edit. Clark), ii. p. 465. From Oxoniana we learn that the name and some shadow of the disputations remained as late as 1812 among the exercises for M.A.
[309] Of this man an excellent account is given in the Portfolio for 1888. But there is some difficulty in attributing the buildings to Holt, for in the very full MSS. accounts for the buildings possessed by the College, his name only occurs as that of a working carpenter, receiving ordinary wages. Perhaps the founder’s servant Arnold may have been the real architect.
[310] Vol. 1611-1618, p. 217.
[311] A full account of this controversy may be read on pp. 6-8 of the Rev. R. B. Gardiner’s Registers of Wadham College, Oxford, to which most valuable and interesting book I wish to acknowledge my constant obligations throughout this chapter. At present only the first volume is out (down to 1719); it is the earnest desire of all interested in the history of the College that Mr. Gardiner may soon be able to complete his work.
[312] P. 53.
[313] I. 291.