The college was tricked out for the reception of king James in August, 1605, when Dr. Bonde was president, and had the good fortune to please the wise monarch. Prince Henry took up his abode in it during their stay. The hieroglyphics, as they are called, or figures in the quadrangle, were painted, and, in particular, Moses had a new green coat on the occasione.

The alms-house subsisted to the time of this president. It was kept by a woman, as the account-books show. The poor were fed, relieved in sickness, and buried (seven in 1517) at the expense of the college. An inventory of the contents was taken in 1559 by the president and dean of divinity; and money was expended then, and at sundry other times, on Claymond's beds and the furniture f. It is described by Dr. Bonde as a stony vault, very low under ground; the resort to it in summer greater, in winter very small; the place being cold, damp, and unwholsome. Timber was procured for

d" Vivis animalium figuris tibicines, occultum nescio quid et "hieroglyphicum significantibus, exornantur." Budden, p. 77. • Moses is mentioned togâ cæruleâ. Wake, Rex Platonicus, p. 71.

f Registr. Coll. A. f. 43.

boarding

boarding the floor; and the beds, which were subject to rottenness, had been removed, the year before his report, into another house not far off; where, as Harpsfield, once a fellow, relates, the poor continued to be abundantly and liberally provided for, according to ancient custom. I can suppose the society had found the alms-house a nuisance, and was in no hurry to receive it again within their walls. The usage probably ceased on the establishment of parish work-houses or infirmaries, to which the sick could repair; and of rates for the relief of the necessitous. The founder had made no mention of the alms-house in his statutes, nor left any directions about it in writing that could be discovered ".

The school, with the refectory and chambers erected by Waynflete near the collegegate and called awhile Grammar-halli, obtained the appellation of St. Mary Magdalenhall as early, it appears, as 1487, when Mr.

Harpsfield, Hist. Eccles. p. 643. Duaci, 1622.

h MSS. Harl. N° 4240. p. 15. A Report by Dr. Bonde, &c. i 1485. Receptiones forinsec. "Et de Mago Bentley per manus "Mri Præs. et Executorum in plenam solutionem pro Aula Gram"maticali, 30"."

"Et

Mr. Richard Gotynden is mentioned as principal, and as renting it of the college. The reputation of the masters produced a conflux of pupils; and the chambers being filled, the society in 1518 added other lodgings, with a gateway on the west, and enlarged the site with a parcel of ground1; the whole being comprised within the boundary assigned them by their own charter of foundation. The hall continued to be governed by one of the fellows, and to flourish in their hands above a century. But an alteration took place after Dr. Hussey, who was principal in 1602, of which I have not met with a clear account. The nomination of the principal was suffered to pass to the chancellor of the university; and the property of the hall, though not of the school, which is a part of the building, has been taken away

"Et de Hostiario pro Schola Grammaticali in temp. vacacionis, " 6" 8d."

*" 1487. de Mr Ricdo Gotynden Principali Aulæ Stae M. Magd. "in plenam solutionem firmæ dictæ Aulæ."

1 A. Wood. Gutch, p. 690, 691.

A. Wood, i. p. 370. He supposes, p. 378, the range of houses reaching from the Hall, and including the Greyhound, to have been erected likewise in 1518; and gives an account of the other subsequent alterations in the Hall, where the original building is still suf ficiently to be distinguished.

from

from the college, which still receives yearly a payment from the head; if I mistake not, the ancient rent. The master and usher have no longer any concern with the refectory or chambers erected by the founder for their use and for their scholars. The school-room alone remains to them; and lodgings are allotted them in the college. Yet the soil is a portion of the site of the college, and unalienable; the buildings, except some modern additions, were reared at the expense of the founder and of the society; a rent has, I believe, never ceased to be paid for the premises; and the account-books prove that fellows were principals during a long period in uninterrupted succession. With these and other circumstances in their favour, the society have not always submitted to receive, perhaps, a disagreeable neighbour and tenant from the chancellor of the university, but have endeavoured to retrieve the loss sustained by an unjustifiable concession, the neglect or mismanagement of their predecessors; to recover an appointment desirable to many of its members; and which now, by vacat

in 20 says A. Wood, p. 573. Append. Lib. Nig. Scacc.

ing the fellowship of the possessor, would animate the whole body, and quicken the circulation of the founder's bounty.

On

a trial in Westminster-hall on the 20th of June 1694, an Oxfordshire Jury confirmed the privilege of nomination to the chancellor, by a verdict grounded, strange to tell! merely on prescription, Time immemorial". Perhaps they believed, too, that this was the Magdalen hall of Waynflete, the nursery of his future society of Magdalen college; an erroneous opinion commonly current, which Antony Wood has laboured to extirpate, almost without success °.

The college chapel is said to have remained as the founder left it, except the altars and images banished by Protestantism, until 1635, when Dr. Frewen was president. A pavement of black and white marble was then laid in the inner chapel. The first wainscot and the stalls, the monuments and the inscriptions, were removed.

n A. Wood's Life, p. 386, cited by Gutch, p. 690.

• A. Wood, i. p. 370, 188. Ayliffe notes it after him, vol. i. p. 454. Heylin is guilty of it. So Tanner, Not. Mon. p. 441. "Wainflet, A. D. 1448, founded without the east gate a hall for "students, and contiguous to it he built, 1458, a fine college, &c. "This W. Wainfleet first founded Magdalen hall hard by (as scri"veners use to try their pens on a small piece of paper before they "begin what they fairly intend to write), and afterwards," &c.

A skreen,