MAGDALEN COLLEGE

MAGDALEN COLLEGE, founded in 1458 by William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester. This college, in its original quadrangle, cloisters, hall, and chapel, built 1474-81 in the founder's lifetime, possesses the finest buildings of any college in the world. The tower, built 1492-1505, on whose top the choir sing a Latin hymn on May Day, is ascribed traditionally to the initiative of Cardinal Wolsey when bursar here. The buildings in the Grove or Park, built 1736, were at one time regarded in Oxford as the perfection of architecture. A new quadrangle to the west (called St Swithun's Buildings) was added in 1885. The musical services in chapel have for centuries been famous. Among the members of this college have been Colet, Latimer, John Hampden, Joseph Addison, Edmund Gibbon. The college has a fine walk round an island formed by two branches of the Cherwell, the northern side of which is called 'Addison's Walk.' The heroic age of the college was the period 1685-88, when its resistance to the arbitrary measures of James II. gave it a foremost place in the history of England.