XVII.— WADHAM COLLEGE.
ATING from the reign of James I. Wadham College occupies an
interesting position in the history of the University, as having been
the last College founded until quite recent times, for both Pembroke
and Worcester were but expansions of older foundations, indeed it
may be said to share with Jesus College the honour of belonging to
the days of Elizabeth, as its founder and foundress were well advanced
in years at the time when they carried out their long meditated plans,
and both in the spirit which animates its statutes and in the architecture
of its fabric, Wadham College belongs rather to the sixteenth than to
the seventeenth century.
The founder of the College, Nicholas Wadham, of Merifeild, in the county of Somerset, was the last male representative of one of the oldest and wealthiest of the untitled families of the West of England. He married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Petre, the well-known benefactor of Exeter College, but having no children he resolved to devote his great wealth to some pious use. All his patrimonial estates went to his three sisters who had married into some of the chief families of the West of England ; but the savings of his long life (he was nearly 80 when he died in 1609) were devoted to the College which bears his name. The work was actually carried out by his wife ; but he had left full instructions as to his wishes, some of which were unusual. He desired that the Warden, as well as the Fellows, should be unmarried ; and also that each of them should be "left free to profess what he listed, as it should please God to direct him; " he did not wish them to "live thro' all their time like idle drones, but put themselves into the world, whereby others may grow up under them." He also arranged that the College should be called after his own name, and that the Bishop of Bath and Wells should be perpetual Visitor.
. . . The foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on July 31st, 1610, and two years later the foundress, having sometime previously obtained a Charter from James I., put forth her statutes (August 16th 1612). There were to be fifteen Fellows and fifteen scholars, the former being elected from among the latter ; of these three scholars were to be from Somerset, and three from Essex, while three Fellowships and three scholar- ships were restricted to " Founder's kin." These were originally intended for the children and descendants of the sisters above-mentioned, but in course of time it became frequent to trace kinship with the founder through collateral branches of the Wadham family.
. . . Owing to the extent of the original design and the excellence of the building material employed, Wadham has the unique honour among the Colleges of Oxford of having remained practically unaltered since it left its foundress' hands. Of the various parts of the building the hall and the chapel are the most remarkable ; the latter, in the shape of its ante-chapel, is a combination of the short nave found at New College and of transepts such as are found at Merton ; while, in the tracery of the windows of its choir, it furnishes a continual puzzle to architectural theorists ; for though undoubtedly every stone of it was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and though the woodwork is pure Jacobean, the windows, both in their tracery and in their mouldings, belong to a period one hundred and fifty years earlier. Tradition ascribes the work to an architect named Holt, who was certainly employed in Oxford at the time in building the New Schools, and it is difficult not to believe that the quad at Wadham and the Fellows' quad at Merton were designed by the same man ; the resemblance between them seems too close to be accidental ; but Mr. T. G. Jackson, A.R.A. , the greatest living authority on Jacobean architecture, and himself a fellow of Wadham, believes that the College buildings cannot be attributed to any one man, but are rather the work of the "craftsman," and not of the professional architect. To his forthcoming book on Wadham, all interested in the development of Jacobean architecture must be referred. The cost of the whole building was ^11,360.
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