The Fellows had no educational duties or emoluments, and consequently no inducement to reside except for purposes of study: and for the most part they were not studious, nor resident. The Fellowships were poor, and so were only attractive to men of means. Hence the management of the College property was a matter of indifference, and it was neglected. Other Colleges no doubt neglected their duties and mismanaged their properties, but All Souls men took a pride in having no duties and in being indifferent to the income arising from their estates. Gradually the College drew more and more apart from its neighbours, until the Fellows made it a point to know nothing and to care nothing about the teaching, the study, or the business that was going on just outside their walls.
Yet a period during which Blackstone, Heber, and the present Prime Minister were numbered among the Fellows, cannot be said to be undistinguished in the history of the College; and this system, indefensible in itself, has handed down some things which the present generation would not be willing to lose. This College, which had become somewhat of a family party, was animated by a peculiarly strong feeling of corporate loyalty. And throughout the change and stir of the last forty years, and in the new and many-sided development of the College, the close tie which binds the Fellow, wherever he may be, to the College has never been weakened. And as the College has come back to an intimate connection with the life of the University, its non-resident element is not without value. The lawyer, the member of Parliament, the diplomatist, and the civil servant, no longer disregarding the University and its pursuits, are an element of great value in a society which is too apt to be engrossed in the details of teaching and of examinations.
The University Commission of 1854 swept away the rights of Founder’s kin together with many other provisions of the Statutes of Chichele, appropriated ten Fellowships to the endowment of Chairs of Modern History and International Law, and threw open the rest to competition in the subjects of Law and Modern History. The Commission of 1877 threatened graver changes, and for a while it was doubtful whether All Souls might not become an undergraduate College of the ordinary type. But in the end the College was allowed to retain, by means of non-resident Fellowships, its old connection with the world outside, while in other ways its endowments were utilized for study and teaching. On the whole it cannot be said to have suffered more than others from the want of constructive genius in the Commissioners. It is and will be a College of many Fellows and several Professors, with liabilities to contribute annual sums to Bodley’s Library and to undergraduate education. The Fellowships are terminable in seven years, but may be renewed in limited numbers and on a reduced emolument.
Under these new conditions All Souls—though still somewhat scantily inhabited—is no longer given over during a great part of each year to the bats and owls. It now plays a useful and important part in the University. Its Hall and lecture-rooms are crowded with undergraduates, its reading-room is full of students of law and history, and its Warden and Fellows have produced in the last ten years about twice as many books as any two other Colleges in the University put together. Last, but not least, it has continued most loyally to fulfil its obligation of providing prize Fellowships; no other foundation can say, though several are far richer than All Souls, that it has regularly offered Fellowships for competition for twenty consecutive years.
X.
MAGDALEN COLLEGE.
By the Rev. H. A. Wilson, M.A., Fellow of Magdalen College.
In the cloisters of Magdalen College, over one of the arches of the “Founder’s Tower,” there is to be seen a heraldic rose surmounting the armorial bearings common to the kings of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster. The rose itself, apparently once red and afterwards painted white, is a curiously significant memorial of the civil strife which affected the early fortunes of the College, and of animosities which were perhaps still too keen, when Waynflete’s tower was built, to allow the Red Rose to appear even as a witness to the fact that his foundation had its beginning under a Lancastrian king.
It was in the reign and under the patronage of Henry VI. that the founder himself rose to his greatness. Of his early life little is known with any certainty. His father, Richard Patten or Barbour, was apparently a man of good descent and position.[196] His mother Margery was a daughter of Sir William Brereton, a Cheshire gentleman who had received knighthood for his military services in France. His change of surname was probably made at the time of his ordination as sub-deacon in 1421. That which he adopted was derived from his birthplace, a town on the coast of Lincolnshire. He is sometimes said to have received his education at one or both of the “two St. Mary Winton Colleges,” but of this there is no evidence, and we know nothing of his University career except the fact that he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts. He must have been still a young man when he was appointed in 1428 to the mastership of the school at Winchester, where he also received, from Cardinal Beaufort, the mastership of a Hospital dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen. To his connection with this foundation we may perhaps trace his especial devotion to its patron Saint, and the consequent dedication of St. Mary Magdalen College. In 1440, Henry VI. visited Winchester to gather hints for his scheme for Eton College, and invited Waynflete to become the first master of the school which formed part of his new foundation. He also made him one of the original body of Fellows of Eton, and a few years later promoted him to be Provost. It was most probably at this time, and to commemorate his connection with Eton, that Waynflete augmented his family arms by the addition of the three lilies which appear, with a difference of arrangement, on the arms of Eton College, and on those which Magdalen College derives from its founder.