MAGDALEN COLLEGE.
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latter in turn furnished the model for the statutes of
the foundation of another Bishop of Winchester, in
Corpus Christi College.
After the Founder's death, while the College was still under the rule of the President to whom he had committed it, its buildings received some important additions, which were perhaps fulfilments of his original design. The most notable of these was the great tower. This structure has sometimes been ascribed to the genius of Cardinal Wolsey, who was Fellow during the years (1492 — 1507) when it was being built. There is, however, no evidence that Wolsey had any special connection with the work. Another architectural feature of the same period is the series of "grotesques" which ornament three sides of the cloister : these were added in 1509. During the first 90 years of its existence, except for some internal dissensions, which in 1506 called for the intervention of the Visitor, the College seems to have been prosperous and well governed. This state of things is attested by the fact that the founders of Corpus Christi and of Cardinal College chose, as the first heads of their new foundations, two Presidents of Magdalen. During the greater part of this time the prosperity of the College was no doubt assisted by its possession of influential friends at Court. Mayew, who was president from 1483 to 1506, was himself in high favour with Henry VII. , while Wolsey, during his greatness, showed himself a friend to his old College. But after Wolsey's fall, though some of its old members, like Stokesley, Bishop of London, held positions of influence during the latter part of Henry VIII. 's reign, the College found no patron so powerful to intervene on its behalf.
Like most of the other Colleges in Oxford, Mag- dalen passed through a troublous period in the reign of Edward VI., when a President legally ineligible was forced upon it in order to carry out the designs of the Council. After the accession of Elizabeth, Laurence Humphrey, one of the more prominent of the Marian exiles, who became Presi- dent in 1 561, used all his influence in favour of Puri- tanism, and for many years after his time the College remained one of the strongholds of Puritan opinions in Oxford. It was however affected in a marked degree by the reaction under the influence of Laud : and Accepted Frewen, who held the office of Presi- dent from 1626 to 1644, was one of the chief sup- porters of Laud's measures of University reform. Under the Commonwealth, the greater part of its members were ejected by the Parliamentary Visitors, and the College became Puritan once more, so far as its occupants were concerned, until the Restoration, when the ejected President, John Oliver, was replaced, and with him the remainder that was left of the ejected Fellows and Demies. Under Oliver's suc- cessor, Dr. Pierce, the College was constantly dis- tracted by internal strife, caused, as it would seem, by well-meant but ill-considered efforts on the part of the President and the Visitor to maintain the ob- servance of the statutes and the traditions of good order in the general relaxation of manners and the changed conditions of University life which followed upon the Restoration. The reign of James II. brought upon Magdalen trouble of another kind. The King endeavoured to force upon the College as its Presi- dent a candidate who was both legally and morally unfit for election to the office. The Fellows chose, instead of Anthony Farmer, the King's nominee, John Hough, one of their own number ; and the struggle which followed forms perhaps the best known
