The Life and Times of John Wilkins: Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Bishop of ChesterWright Henderson, P. A. (Patrick Arkley)
History
The Life and Times of John Wilkins: Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Bishop of Chester
The College may do well to remember the closing of one of her last
letters to the Warden and Fellows: "Above all things, I would have you
to avoid contentions among yourselves, for without true charity there
cannot be a true Society."--(Wells' 'History of Wadham,' p. 44.) She was
buried beside her husband in the Wadham aisle at Ilminster.
Only a few months after her death a question arose in which she would
have taken a keen interest, and have supported her College to the
uttermost. In October 1618 James I. set an example, which his grandson,
James II., followed, of that contempt for law which proved fatal to the
Stuarts. He wrote to his "trusty and well beloved, the Warden and
Fellows of Wadham College, bidding them elect Walter Durham of St
Andrews a Fellow, notwithstanding anything in their statutes to the
contrary." Durham had not been a scholar, and the vacancy had been
filled up by the Foundress, for whose death "their eyes were still wet."
It is possible that Durham's being a Scotchman was another objection to
his reception as a Fellow in those days when his aggressive countrymen
had found the high-road to England: this objection the Society did not
put before the King, but pleaded only the obligations of the statutes.
Supported by the Earl of Pembroke, the Chancellor of the University,
their resistance was successful. To Wadham belongs the honour of being
the earliest Oxford champion of legality in the struggle of seventy
years: as to Magdalen belongs the honour of the resistance which brought
that struggle nearly to its close. From 1618 onward till--who can say
when? the College has been on the popular or constitutional side, save
in 1648. The portrait of James I., who gave the College its Charter,
hangs in the Hall; there are no portraits there of Charles I., Charles
II., James II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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