William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and later Henry VI’s Lord High Chancellor of England who “made a great reputation as headmaster, first of Winchester, and later of Eton” (99), founded a “hall at Oxford for the study of theology and philosophy” that became the college St Mary Magdalen, commonly known as Magdalen College. He purchased “the Hospital of St John the Baptist, an institution for ‘the relief of poor scholars and other miserable persons,’ which had fallen into decay, pensioned off the master and brethren, bestowed the poor inmates elsewhere, and set to work upon the present Magdalen College” (100) in 1474 and the head of college (the President) and scholars moved in in 1480. Only two of the original parts of Magdalen remain: “the chapel, facing the High, which now forms part of the Chaplains’ quadrangle and may be identified by the blocked - up doorway to the west of the Great Tower; and the kitchen, a detached building. . . The name of the hospital is perpetuated in St John’s quad, the first reached through the porter’s lodge” (Lang, 100),
Left: The oldest part of Magdalen College. C. F. Walton. c. 1909. Right: Open-Air Pulpit, Magdalen College. W. G. Blackall. c. 1920. Click on images to enlarge them.
As Elsie M. Lang explains, “One custom that dates back to the hospital days is the preaching of an open-air sermon to the populace on St John the Baptist’s day, which was discontinued at the end of the eighteenth century, but revived in 1896 by the present Bishop of Stepney, then Dean of Divinity at Magdalen. Waynflete built for the purpose the curious stone pulpit at the south - east angle of the quad, and there the listeners assembled, the ground having previously been strewn with rushes and grass and the buildings decorated with green boughs” (101-02),
Left: The Founder's Tower. Right: Magdalen College Quad. Both by W. Matthison. c. 1909.
Much of the college that Waynflete built still remains: “the whole of the Cloister quad, with chapel, hall, Founder’s Tower, which stands over the principal entrance to the cloisters, the Muniment Tower, where the college charters are kept, at the north-west corner of the chapel, and the building now known as the Grammar Hall, once used as a grammar school for the junior students, and called Magdalen Hall, which stands at the corner of St Swithun’s quad” (102).
The Faculty, Administration, and Students of Waynflete’s Magdalen Collge
“Waynflete’s foundation consisted of a president, forty graduate fellows, and thirty demies, so called because their allowance was half that of the fellows. A demy might not be less than twelve years old nor more than twenty-five, and the younger demies were taught by a grammar master and an usher in Magdalen Hall. There were also a vice-president, three deans, three bursars, three readers who lectured on natural philosophy, metaphysics, and theology, and twenty commoners. The choir, which has always been one of the most important features of the community, consisted of four chaplains, eight clerks, and sixteen choristers. In each room there were two principal beds and one or two “trookyll” beds, occupied respectively by fellows and demies or choristers, and the choristers waited in Hall, a custom kept up until 1802. In many respects Waynflete followed Wykeham’s model at New College, both as regards buildings and statutes, introducing how ever certain improvements and extensions of his own” (102-03).
Bibliography
Artistic Colored Views of Oxford Being Proof Sheets of the Postcards of Oxford. Oxford: E. Cross, nd. Internet Archive version of a copy in St. Michael's College Toronto. 3 October 2012.
Lang, Elsie M. The Oxford Colleges. London: T. Werner. HathiTrust online version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 8 November 2022.
Wells, J. The Charm of Oxford. Illustrated by W. G. Blackall. 2nd ed. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton Kent & Co., [c.1920]. Internet Archive version of a copy in St. Michael's College Toronto. 3 October 2012.
Last modified 27 November 2022