The Life and Times of John Wilkins

arden, by the Vice-Chancellor of the University in St Mary's Church; the fifteen Fellows by the Warden in the College Hall; the fifteen Scholars by the Warden and Fellows in the same place. All

tern-gate which he maintains was used by the friars for various purposes. Another memorial of the Priory survived till 1800-the phrase of "doing Austins." Up to that date, or near it, every Bachelor of Arts was required once in each year to "dispute and answer ad Augustinenses," and

conflict of testimony on this point, but Corpus was probably his college. At the age of twenty-three he married Dorothy Petre. She was two years younger than her husband, born in 1534, the daughter of Sir William Petre of Writtle in Essex, near which much of the College property n

he childless pair determined to devote their wealth to "the purposes of religion, learning, and education." Their creed, like that of many waverers in those days of transition, was by no means clear, possibly even to themselves. The Wadhams were suspected of being Recusants,

d against any person contributing to the support of any College of Jesuits, or Seminary, erected, or hereafter to be erected, beyond the sea": and finally, Mr Jackson dwells on many evidences from facts that the Founder was in his later years strictly conformable to the Reformed Church. These are weighty arguments, and to them may be added others worthy of consideration. To a daughter of Sir William Petre her husband's design, if he ever entertained it, would have been more than distasteful, for its fulfilment would have meant a con

befitting, in the estimation of those days, the obsequies of an important country gentleman: it cost ￡500, equivalent now to a sum sufficient for the publi

f, as did architects in the middle ages and later, the functions of head workman, master mason, architect, and clerk of works in one-a master builder. The stones came from the quarries at Headington and Shotover; the slates from Stonesfield and Burford. Part of the beauty of the College is due to the soft col

the kindliest of men, but the most accurate, and it gave him, for he was human, great pleasure to correct mistakes. He listened silently to the great man's argument: next morning, at a large breakfast party given in the College Common Room to the members of the British Association which met at Oxford in the year 1847, he quietly laid the Accoun

regular and uniform of any in the University." It is the best specimen of that late Gothic style which

the College has: the resources of the Founders sufficed to build only one quadrangle; they had not counted the cost of the stately Chapel and Hall, and little was left for College rooms. When will our benefactor come? But it would be ungracious in Wadham men to criticise the Founders of their College, to whom they owe the most beautiful of homes. It stood fifty years ago almost in the country, with nothing north or east of it save the Museum and green

ongs to the home of generations who have spent there the happiest years of life, preparing for themselves distinction and success, or obscurity and failure. As you stand in the well-known College garden, one side of which is bounded by the chapel and long line of wall and gables showing half-white half-grey against the sward fro

for her own when the day of reckoning comes, and men will have to share with women not merely degrees but buildings a

ssion, as eyther devinitie, lawe, or phisicke, but leave every man free to profess what he liked, as it should please God to direct him. He then told me that after they weare Masters of Arte of a competent number of yeares, that then he would have them absolutely to departe the Colledge, and not live there all theire lives like idle drones, but put themselves into the world, whereby others might growe up under them, his intente being chiefly to nourishe and trayne up men into Learni

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cademical life to guide them: Nicholas Wadham foresaw things and needs not foreseen or understood by his contemporaries or predecessors. His Fellowships were to be, all of them, open to laymen, and terminable after a tenure of years in which a young lawyer, of physician, might maintai

rate in Divinity made the office clerical for two hundred and sixty years. In all other points she followed the instructions which she may herself to some extent have inspired. Her Visitor was to be the Bishop of the diocese in which she had spent her life; her Warden was to be "a virtuous and honourable man of stainl

on a Warden of Wadham till 1806, when it was removed by a special Act of Parliament. Modern criticism respects a love-story no more than it respects the Pentateuch. A comparison of dates shows that Dr Wright was fifty-four years old at the time of his appointment in 1613, and the Foundress was then seventy-nine. The difference of a quarter of a century makes the truth of the story not indeed impossible but improbable; the coy Warden held his office only for two months: the cause of his resignation or expulsion is not known, but was probably not "spret? injuria form?": the hero of the story wished to marry somebody else, and resigned his post because he was not permitted to do so, as Mr Wells informs us, adding a prosaic explanation of the lovers' quarrel, a disagreement abo

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intained its connection with the West of England. The Foundress showed her resolve that her husband's countryside should be well represented among the first members of the foundation: of the fifteen Fellows, eleven-of the fifteen Scholars, ten, came from western counties, especially from Somerset; the Commoners also were many of them

attached, now used as bedrooms, or as scouts' pantries. In the nine years following the admissions were necessarily fewer-averaging twenty-seven. It is probable that till the depletion of Oxford, when the Civil War began-i.e., during the first thirty years of its life-Wadham numbered on an average between eighty and ninety undergraduates, all of them resident in College, as was then required by the Statutes of the University. This estimate is based on imperfect data, and Mr Gardiner has pronounced that materials for any accurate calculation are not to be found. We

tween 5 and 6 A.M. and between 8 and 9 P.M.; and attendance twice a-day was required from bachelors and undergraduates, and rigidly enforced. Attendance at roll-call as a substitute for chapel was unheard of in those days, when all members of the colleges were, or were presumed to be, members also of the Church of England, nor would conscientious scruples have been treated with much courtesy. In other matters discipline was no less strict; clothes and boots were to be black, and gowns were to be long. No undergraduate was allowed to go out of College unaccompanied by a "discrete senior" of mature age as a witness to his good behaviour, unless to attend a lecture or a disputation: nor might he keep dogs, or guns, or fe

earning and discipline in the University. "Before the warr wee had scholars that made a thorough search in scholasticall and polemicall divinity, in humane authors, and naturall philosophy. But now scholars studie these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the Universitie. Their aime is not to live as students ought to do-viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to sw

rong-minded woman, and her husband a submissive man without character and will. The myth rests only on the science of physiognomy working on portraits,-a most insecure foundation. The Founders' portraits depict him as a gentle, placid person with melancholy eyes; her as a hard-featured woman with a long u

things, I would have you to avoid contentions among yourselves, for without true charity there cannot be a true S

rham had not been a scholar, and the vacancy had been filled up by the Foundress, for whose death "their eyes were still wet." It is possible that Durham's being a Scotchman was another objection to his reception as a Fellow in those days when his aggressive countrymen had found the high-road to England: this objection the Society did not put before the King, but pleaded only the obligations of the statutes. Supported by the Earl of Pembroke, the Chancellor of the University, their resist

he Coldstream Guards, leave was cordially given to that distinguished regiment to have an electrotype made of the Blake medal for its own exclusive use, and to be kept in perpetuum among the memorials of its long history. It is the oldest regiment in the service, the only survivor of Cromwell's New Model; it was commanded by Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, when he crossed the border to march to London, perhaps with no definite intention to restore the Monarchy-perhaps also prompted by his brother Nicholas, a Wadham man, to solve the great problem in that simple way. The rest of the New Model were disbanded after the Restoration, but, doubtless in deference to Monk, the Coldstreams were reformed, and became the King's

ellows, ought to be remembered, partly on his own account, for he was a vigorous and devoted Royalist, a fighting man when his cause was hopeless; partly because he may have been the original of Dr Rochcliff

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presented also all classes of society, from Dymokes, Herberts, Russells, Portmans, Strangways, to the humblest plebeiorum fi

estions than the interpretation of a Statute or the disputed election of a College officer were already in the air. The only dissension of any interest was one which led to an appeal to the Vi

es of Wilkins' manhood: he was born a year later t

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el and Minchin's