Professor Burrows in a most ingenious passage of his Worthies makes a plausible suggestion as to the real origin of the Mallard. He found in Alderman Fletcher’s copy of Anthony à Wood, now in the Bodleian, the impression of a seal bearing a griffin, inscribed “Sigillum Guilielmi Mallardi Clerici.” This seal of one Mallard was actually dug up in making a drain on the site of All Souls, to the east of the Warden’s lodgings. Can the exhuming of Mallard’s seal have been turned by oral tradition into the finding of an actual mallard?
Down to the time of the great Civil War the College, though always more or less tainted with the evil of corrupt resignations, continued to produce a great number of able men. Since the Reformation laymen are found among them as well as clerics. We may name Lord Chancellor Weston, Mason and Petre, both Privy Councillors of note, and the Persian traveller Sir Anthony Sherley, under Elizabeth; while in the early seventeenth century we meet Archbishop Sheldon—long Warden of the College—Bishop Duppa, and Jeremy Taylor. The election of the last-named illustrates in the most striking way the manner in which corrupt resignations had come to be looked upon as matters of routine. Osborne, a Fellow about to vacate his place, instead of putting his nomination up for sale, made a present of it to Archbishop Laud. Laud, taking the procedure as the most natural thing in the world, bade him nominate Taylor, who was therefore elected, but with great murmurs from the College, for he was a Cambridge man, and of nine years standing since his degree.
Those who know only the modern constitution of All Souls, will find it startling to learn that down to the Great Rebellion the College was not without its fair share of undergraduates. There was no provision for them in the statutes, but a number of “poor scholars” (servientes) were allowed to matriculate. In 1612 there were as many as thirty-one of them on the books at once. In going through a list of All Souls men who became Fellows of Wadham between 1615 and 1660, I found that about one in three were servientes, so their number must have been not inconsiderable. The College narrowly escaped having a regular provision of scholars, for Archbishop Parker had planned the endowment of a considerable number of scholarships from Canterbury Grammar School when he died. After the Restoration the servientes are no more heard of, or at least the four Bible-clerks then appear as their sole successors.
Few Colleges suffered more from the Civil Wars than All Souls. Its head, Sheldon, was one of the King’s chaplains, and all, save a very small minority of the Fellows, were enthusiastic Royalists. One of them, William St. John, was slain in battle in the King’s cause, and others of them bore arms for him. It is most pitiful to read the account of the College plate which went to the melting-pot in New Inn Hall, to come forth as the ugly Oxford shillings of Charles I. All Souls contributed 253 lbs. 1 oz. 19 dwts. in all, more than any other house save Magdalen, besides a large sum in ready money. Its treasury was swept clean of the founder’s gifts, of Warden Keyes’ “great cupp double gilt with the image of St. Michael on its cover,” of all the church-plate that had escaped Parker, of tankards, flagons, and goblets innumerable. Worse was to follow: the bulk of the College estates lay in Kent and Middlesex, counties in the hands of the Parliament, and their rents could not be raised. At the end of the first year the tenants were £600 in arrears, and the evil went on growing, while at the same time the demands on the purse of the College were increasing. In June 1643 the College was directed by the King to maintain 102 soldiers for a month, at the rate of four shillings a week per man. It had to contribute towards the fortifications, towards stores for the siege, and towards the relief of the poor of the city. Altogether it would seem that the finances of the College went to pieces, and that the greater part of the Fellows dispersed. When the Parliamentary Visitors got to work on the University, as much as two years after the fall of Oxford, they found only eleven members of the College in residence. Warden Sheldon was summoned before them to ask whether he acknowledged their authority, and replied with frankness, “I cannot satisfy myself that I ought to submit to this visitation.” Next day a notice of ejectment was served upon him, and the day following the Chancellor Pembroke went with the Visitors to expel him. They found Sheldon walking in his little garden, read their decree to him, and then sent for the College buttery-book, out of which they struck his name, inserting instead of it that of Dr. Palmer, whom they had designated as his successor. Next they bade him give over his keys, and when he refused broke open his lodgings, installed Palmer in them, and sent the rightful owner away under a guard of musketeers, “followed as he went by a great company of scholars, and blessed by the people as he passed down the street.”
Of the Fellows, only five made their peace with the Visitors, and avoided expulsion; even five of the College servants were deprived of their places. The Commissioners proceeded for five years to nominate to the Fellowships, and intruded in all forty-three new members on to the foundation between 1648 and 1653. It is only fair to say that if some of them were abnormal personages—such as Jerome Sanchy, who combined the functions of Proctor and Colonel of Horse—others were men of conspicuous merit. The most noteworthy of them was Sydenham, the greatest medical name except Linacre that the College—perhaps that England—can boast.
In 1653, free elections recommenced, and as the first-fruits of their labours the new Fellows co-opted Christopher Wren. This greatest of all the Fellows of All Souls was in residence for eight years, working from the very first year of his election at architecture, though astronomy and mathematics were also taking up part of his time. Ere he had been many months a Fellow, he erected the large sundial, with the motto pereunt et imputantur, which now adorns the Library. In 1661 he resigned his Fellowship on becoming Professor of Astronomy, and shortly after departed for London. Almost the only note of his All Souls life that survives is the fact that he was a great frequenter of the newly-established coffee-house, next door to University College. His famous architectural drawings were left to the College, and are still preserved in the Library.
The troubles of the Restoration passed over with very little friction at All Souls. Palmer, the intruding Warden, died in the very month of King Charles’ return, and Sheldon peaceably took possession of his old place. But within two years he was called off, to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and John Meredith reigned in his stead. This Warden’s short tenure of office is marked by the horrible mutilation of the reredos to which we have already alluded. The College must needs have a “restoration” of its chapel, and in the true spirit of the “restorer,” broke away much of what was characteristic in it, plastered up the rest, and hired Streater, painter to the king, to daub a “Last Judgment” on the flat space thus obtained. Having accomplished this feat Meredith died.
Meredith’s successor, Jeames, prompted and supported by Archbishop Sancroft, succeeded in finally putting down the evil of corrupt resignations, which had survived the Parliamentary Visitation, and blossomed out into all its old luxuriance in the easy times of the Restoration. The fight came to a head in 1680-1, when Jeames, for two years running, used his veto to prevent the election of all candidates nominated by resigners. The veto frustrating any election, the Visitor was by the statutes allowed to fill up the vacant places, and did so. The threat that the same procedure should again be carried out in the next year brought the majority of the College to reason, though for the whole twelve months, Nov. 1680-Nov. 1681, twenty-four discontented Fellows, whom Jeames called “the Faction,” were moving heaven and earth to get the Warden’s right of veto rescinded. From 1682 onwards, the type of Fellow improved, and some of the most distinguished members of the College date from the years 1680-1700. It is in this period, however, that the complaint begins to be heard that All Souls looked to birth quite as much as to learning in choosing its candidates. “They generally,” says Hearne—a great enemy of the College—“pick out those that have no need of a Fellowship, persons of great fortunes and good birth, and often of no morals and less learning.” For the former part of this statement, the names in the College register give some justification: concerning the latter, we can only say that the average of men who came to great things in the list of Fellows is higher in Hearne’s time than at any other. To this period belong Dr. Clarke, Secretary of War under William III., Christopher Codrington—of whom more hereafter—Bishop Tanner the antiquary, Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, and many more.
The reign of James II. was fraught with as much danger to All Souls as to the other Colleges of the University. Warden Jeames died in 1686, and every one expected and dreaded an attempt to force a Papist head on the College. What happened was almost as bad. There was in the foundation a very junior Fellow—only elected in 1682—named Leopold Finch, son of the Earl of Winchelsea, whose riotous outbreaks and habitual fits of inebriety had done much to embitter Jeames’ last years of rule. Finch was a hot Tory, and when, on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion, the University proposed to raise a regiment of trained-bands for the King, was one of the leaders in the movement. He enlisted a company of musketeers from members of All Souls and Merton, and this company was the only part of the University battalion that actually took the field. Its not very glorious record of service consisted in occupying Islip for ten days, to secure the London road, and stop all transit of suspicious persons. When the news of Sedgmoor came, Lord Abingdon bade the company dine with him at Rycot, and they came home “well fuzzed with his ale,” insomuch that their very drum was stove in, and remains so to this day, stored, with one of the muskets borne by the volunteers, in All Souls Bursary.