All Souls seems to have passed through the storms of the Reformation with singularly little friction from within or without. One single Warden, John Warner—the first Regius professor of Medicine in the University—continued to steer the course of the College from 1536 to 1556, complying with all the various commands of Henry VIII., making himself acceptable both to Somerset and Northumberland, and even holding on for two years into Mary’s reactionary time. It is true that he then resigned his post, but he was evidently no less complying under the Papalist Queen than under her Protestant predecessor, as no harm came to him though he continued to reside in Oxford. Warden Pope, his successor, having died in the first year of Elizabeth, Warner was immediately restored to his old post, and held it till he was made Dean of Winchester in 1565.
It was during Warner’s wardenship that we have the first mention of an evil custom in the College, which was to form for a hundred years a subject of dispute between the Fellows and their Visitor the Archbishop. This was the habit of “corrupt resignation.” A member of the College, when about to vacate his Fellowship, not unfrequently had some friend or relation whom he wished to succeed him. This candidate he naturally pushed and supported at the annual election on All Souls’ Day. It came to be the tacit custom of the College to elect candidates so supported; for each Fellow, when voting for an outgoing colleague’s nominee, remembered that he himself would some day wish to recommend a protégé for election in a similar manner. This right of nomination being once grown customary, soon grew into a monstrous abuse, for unscrupulous Fellows, when about to vacate their places, began to hawk their nominations about Oxford. Actual payments in hard cash were made by equally unscrupulous Bachelors of Arts or Scholars of Civil Law, to secure one of these all-powerful recommendations. Hence there began to appear in the College not the poor but promising scholars for whom Chichele had designed the foundation, but men of some means, who had practically bought their places. Cranmer was the first Visitor who discovered and endeavoured to crush this noxious system. In 1541 we find him declaring that he will impose an oath on every Fellow to obey his injunction against the practice, and that every Fellowship obtained by a corrupt resignation shall be summarily forfeited. At the same time we find him touching on other minor offences in the place—misdoings which seem ludicrously small compared to the huge abuse with which he couples them. Fellows have been seen clad not in the plain livery which the pious founder devised, but in gowns gathered round the collar and arms and quilted with silk; they have been keeping dogs in College; some of them have hired private servants; others of them have engaged in “compotationibus, ingurgitationibus, crapulis et ebrietatibus.” All these customs are to cease at once. It is to be feared that the good Archbishop was as unsuccessful in suppressing these smaller sins and vanities, as he most certainly was in dealing with the evil of corrupt resignations.
It was in the reign of the same compliant Warden Warner, under whom Cranmer’s visitation took place, that All Souls was robbed of its greatest ornament—the decorations of its chapel. In 1549, by order of the Royal Commissioners appointed by Protector Somerset, havoc was made with the whole interior of the building. The organ was removed, the windows broken, the high-altar and seven side-altars taken down, and, worst of all, the whole reredos gutted; its fifty statues and eighty-five statuettes were destroyed, and so it remained, vacant but graceful, though much chipped about in the course of ages, till in the reign of Charles II. the Fellows in their wisdom concluded to plane down its projections, stuff its niches with plaster, and paint a sprawling fresco upon it! The church vestments of the College were probably destroyed at the same time that the chapel was made desolate, but its church plate was not defaced, but merely removed to the muniment-room and put in safe keeping. There it remained till 1554, when it came down again, and was again employed in Queen Mary’s time. In 1560 it was once more put into store in the strong-room, and there it remained till in 1570 Archbishop Parker had it brought forth and bade it be melted down, “except six silver basons together with their crewets, the gilt tabernacle, two silver bells, and a silver rod.” After a stout resistance lasting three years, the College was obliged to comply. Charles I. received nearly all that Parker spared, and of the old communion-plate of All Souls there now survives nought but two of the crewets preserved in 1573. They are splendid pieces of the work of about 1500, eighteen inches high, shaped like pilgrim’s bottles, and ornamented with swans’ heads. The founder’s silver-gilt and crystal salt-cellar, the only other piece of antique silver which All Souls now owns, was most fortunately not in the hands of the College in Charles’s time, or it would have shared the fate of the rest of its ancient plate.
One more incident of Warner’s tenure of office needs mention. He erected with subscriptions raised from all quarters as a residence for himself, the building which faces the High Street in continuation of the front quadrangle to the east. For the future, Wardens had six rooms instead of two to live in, and there is splendour as well as comfort in the magnificent panelled room on the first floor which forms the chief apartment in the new building. Here dwelt Warner’s successors, till in the reign of Anne the present Warden’s lodgings were erected still further eastward.
Warden Hoveden, whose long rule of forty-three years covered most of the reign of Elizabeth and half that of James I. (1571-1614) was a man of mark. He adorned the old library, now the “great lecture-room,” in the front quadrangle, with the beautiful barrel-roof and panelling which make it the best Elizabethan room in Oxford. He bought and added to the grounds of the College a large house and garden called “the Rose,” where the Warden’s lodgings now stand. He arranged and codified the College books and muniments. He caused to be constructed a splendid and elaborate set of maps of the College estates, ten years before any other College in the University thought of doing such a thing (1596). These maps are worked out on a most minute scale: every tree and house is inserted; and as a proof of how English common-fields were still worked in minutely subdivided slips, only a few yards broad, they are invaluable. One map gives a bird’s-eye view of All Souls, with its two quadrangles as then existing, and is the first good representation of the College that remains. But Hoveden’s greatest achievements were his two victories in struggles with Queen Elizabeth. The first contest concerned the parsonage and tithes of the parish of Stanton Harcourt; the Crown and the College litigated about them for just forty years, 1558-98; but Hoveden had his way, and in the latter year they came back into the hands of the College. In the regrant of the disputed property, the Queen’s reasons are stated to be the poverty of the College and the want of a convenient house near Oxford to which the Fellows might retire in times of pestilence in the University. Epidemical disorders had been very common at the date: in 1570-1 the plague carried off 600 persons, and in 1577 a fearful distemper in consequence of the “Black Assize” was no less fatal. Such a house as Stanton Harcourt parsonage was then of infinite utility, and for more than 200 years the College used to compel its tenants by a covenant in their lease, to “find four chambers in the house, furnished with bedding linen, and woollen for so many of the fellows as shall be sent to lodge there whenever any pestilence or other contagious disorder shall happen in the University.” The second struggle resulted from an attempt of Elizabeth to induce All Souls to grant a lease of all their woods to Lady Stafford, at the ridiculously small rent of twenty pounds per annum. Hoveden resisted stoutly, and his refusal drew down a most disgraceful letter of threats from Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter intimates that the Queen is highly incensed that “subjects of your quality” should presume to chaffer with her, and hints at evils to come if compliance is still refused. The Warden replied that the terms offered were so bad that if they were taken the Fellows would be compelled to give up housekeeping and take to the fields. To this it was answered that “their state was so plentiful by her Majesty’s statute, that they seemed rather as fat monks in a rich abbey than students in a poor College.” Hoveden stood his ground and enlisted Whitgift, the Visitor, to work with Lord Burleigh in the defence of the College. Burleigh moved Elizabeth to relax her pressure, and Lady Stafford never obtained her cheap lease.
By the end of Hoveden’s time a new subject of interest comes to the front in the management of the College. The rise in wealth and in prices which characterized the Tudor epoch resulted in the development of the annual surplus from the College estates into unexpected proportions. When all outgoings were paid there were often £500 or £600 left to be transferred to the strong-box in the gate-tower. It naturally occurred to the Fellows that some of this money might reasonably come their way. Archbishop Whitgift allowed them to augment their daily commons from it, and afterwards bade them commute their “livery” in cloth for a reasonable equivalent in cash. This was done, but still the annual surplus cash grew. Archbishop Bancroft directed it “to amendment of diet and other necessary uses of common charge.” He soon found that this merely led to luxurious living. “It is astonishing,” he wrote, “this kind of beer which heretofore you have had in your College, and I do strictly charge you, that from henceforth there be no other received into your buttery but small-and middle-beer, beer of higher rates being fitter for tippling-houses.” Yet the College strong ale still survives! Nor was it only in its drinking that the College offended: its eating corresponded: the gaudés, and the annual Bursar’s dinner became huge banquets, costing some £40; guests were invited in scores, and the festivities prolonged to the third day. Such things were only natural when the Fellows had the disposal of a large revenue, yet were not allowed to draw from it more than food and clothing. At last, Archbishop Abbott, in 1620 bethought him of a less demoralizing way of disposing of the surplus: he boldly doubled the livery-money. Then for the first time a Fellowship became worth some definite value in hard cash. The next step was easy enough; instead of a fixed double livery, there was distributed annually so many times the original livery as the surplus could safely furnish. The seniors drew more than the juniors, and the jurists more then the artists. This arrangement, after working in practice for many years, was sanctioned in theory also by Archbishop Sheldon in 1666.
It is in a letter of Archbishop Abbott’s, dealing with one of the riotous feasts to which the College had grown addicted, that we have our first mention of that celebrated bird, the All Souls Mallard. The Visitor writes—“The feast of Christmas drawing now to an end, doth put me in mind of the great outrage which, as I am informed, was the last year committed in your College, where although matters had formerly been conducted with some distemper, yet men did never before break forth into such intolerable liberty as to tear down doors and gates, and disquiet their neighbours as if it had been a camp or a town in war. Civil men should never so far forget themselves under pretence of a foolish mallard, as to do things barbarously unbecoming.” Evidently the gaudé had developed into one of those outbreaks, which a modern Oxford College knows well enough when its boat has gone head of the river. Furniture had been smashed, perhaps a bonfire lighted; certainly the noise had been long and loud. But what of the Mallard? Pamphlets have been written on him, and College tradition tells that when the first stone of the College was laid a mallard was started out of a drain on the spot. In commemoration of the event, the Fellows annually went round the College after the gaudé, pretending to search for the tutelary bird. The song concerning him was written to be sung by “Lord Mallard,” a Fellow chosen as the official songster of the College. It bears every appearance of being of Jacobean date—
“Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon,
Let other hungry mortals gape on,