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MAGDALEN COLLEGE.

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portion of College history. The King proposed Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford, in place of his former nominee : the College, on their part, main- tained that the place of President was already filled by the statutable election of Hough, and refused to consider that election as null. The President and all but a few of the Fellows were accordingly ejected by members of the Ecclesiastical Commission, who claimed to exercise visitatorial authority on behalf of the King : the Bishop of Oxford was installed as President by the Commissioners ; and under him the greater part of the Demies were ejected also. The places of almost all the members of the foundation were filled up by the intrusion, under sanction of mandates from the King, of persons belonging to the Roman communion. Finally the King gave way, and the expelled members of the College were re- stored by their proper Visitor, the Bishop of Win- chester, a few days before William of Orange landed at Torbay. From 1688 to 1854 the history of the College was uneventful. The greater part of this period, indeed, is marked in the history of the Uni- versity as a time of intellectual depression, and Magdalen was no exception to the general rule. It was by no means the only College in which, during the 18th century, learning was less important than politics, and study less attractive, to a majority of the residents, than pleasures of a lower kind. But here, as elsewhere, there were not wanting instances of men who honestly laboured in the cause of learning, even in the days of which Gibbon has left so dreary a picture. The list of members of the College during

this period contains the names of many men who attained distinction in their own day, and of some who attained more enduring celebrity. To the last class belonged Dr. Routh, President from 1791 to 1854, whose death in the latter year marks in the history of Magdalen the end of the old condition of things. The same year was marked by another event, in the beginning of the University Commissions, by whose action, as well as by the action of the College itself, a great process of change has been since carried on. The principal changes introduced by the Commissions, here as elsewhere, have been those of making the Demyships and Fellowships "open," of removing the obligation to receive Holy Orders, which was originally binding upon the great majority of the Fellows, of limiting the tenure of Demyships and Fellowships, and of annexing certain Fellowships to Professorships in the University, of which the College supplies the whole or some part of the stipend. The principle change due to the action of the College itself, apart from the Commis- sions, has been that of the admission of Commoners to a number much greater than that contemplated by the statutes of the founder, a change gradually brought about, which has resulted in a complete transforma- tion of the College from what it was within the memory of its older members.

H. A. Wilson.

For a further account of the Constitution and History of the College by the same author, see The Colleges of Oxford ; Methuen, 1891.

view by bereblock, 1566.— Facsimile from Hearne.