The Transition from Magdalen Hall to Hertford College
‘Magdalen Hall to Hertford College’
Aidan Lawes, Introduction to ‘Report on the Muniments of Hertford College, Oxford, 18th-20th Century, Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1985
Magdalen Hall had been re-born in the fire that had engulfed most of its buildings in 1820 and led to its migration to the site of the dissolved Hertford College, two years later. Montague Burrows, Chichele Professor of Modern History, who entered Magdalen Hall in 1853, writing to Rashdall in 1893, to criticise his neglect of its importance, argued that it was a ‘Society which started afresh in 1822 & exchanged the decayed condition of an effete body for a flourishing and influential existence on its new site’ and that the years from 1822 to 1874 ‘witnessed the creation and continuance of a body of students which took rank in numbers with the largest Colleges, and which, under Dr Macbride, Jacobson & Michell, with their able assistants, turned out many distinguished men’ [Letter from Burrowes to Rashdall (HC-PER/Boyd/4)].
It was the largest and the most successful of those academic halls of Oxford that had survived into the nineteenth century. The Royal Commission, established in 1850 to investigate the workings of Oxford University and its constituent bodies, found five halls still in existence. Of these, Magdalen Hall, with 108 undergraduates – more than any of the Colleges, apart from Christ Church and Exeter – was the largest; thee next hall in size, St Mary Hall, had only 52 undergraduates, the number of one of the smaller colleges; the smallest, St Alban Hall, had a mere 7 undergraduates on its books.
Magdalen Hall was also noteworthy because it was able to offer open scholarships, at a time when College scholarships were almost invariably restricted – to persons from particular schools, from particular areas or to descendants of the benefactors who had originally endowed them. Theoretically, certain endowments that had been left for scholarships at Magdalen Hall were restricted to particular schools, but one of the schools, at Hampton Lucy, had ceased to exist and the other, Worcester College School, had fallen into decay and was rarely able to put up suitable candidates. Consequently, Macbride, Principal of Magdalen Hall, was able to take a liberal and independent line with such endowments – ‘I give it out in Exhibitions according to my own discretion’, he explained to the Royal Commissioners [Parliamentary Papers 1852 XXII, 1 p. 219-220], paying a standard £20 pa, a sum sufficient to meet all board, lodging and tuition charges, in cases of particular need. Unfortunately, Macbride’s liberality outstripped the slender resources at his disposal – in a memorandum of July 1835 he noted that receipts from the Scholarship endowments came to no more than £227 9s pa, whereas the payments to thirteen scholars amounted to £340 – his inevitable conclusion was that ‘the payments at present much exceed the receipts, and therefore the present number must be reduced’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/56], and within two years, the number of scholars had dropped to eight. Nonetheless, Macbride was maximising the resources at his disposal for educational purposes and the only improvement that the Commission, subsequently established by the 1854 University Reform Act, could make, was to officially ratify Macbride’s consolidation of the scholarship endowments [X-MH/GOV/4].
Macbride had also been able to establish formally open scholarships – when Henry Lusby left property in 1830, to found three scholarships at Magdalen Hall, Macbride was able to ensure that the conditions for eligibility were unrestricted – ‘no regard being had to the place of birth, school, parentage or the pecuniary circumstances of the candidate’ [X-MH/BT/4/1] and in 1856, the Macbride scholarship, endowed by a subscription, echoed these sentiments and was to be open to ‘all persons without limitation as to age or place of birth’ [X-MH/BT/5/1]. In this respect, Magdalen hall was upheld as a model by those reformers who wished to open up the closed Scholarships and Fellowships that tied their College to particular schools, places and families, to the detriment of academic standards and public utility. Francis Jeune, the reforming Master of Pembroke, and the only Head of a College to sit on the Royal Commission of 1850, argued, in a letter of June 15, 1853 to the Chancellor of the University – Lord Derby – ‘If my college cannot be opened, I for one would decidedly prefer to see the property revert to the heirs-at-law. Close foundations are not only useless, they are injurious. Magdalen Hall which has not a penny, is infinitely more beneficial than the noblest foundation in Oxford, Magdalen College’ [Quoted in Ward, WR. Victorian Oxford, 1965, p. 180].
Magdalen Hall offered one further advantage – it was economical, which meant that more people could afford to go there. According to WG Ward – ‘Members of halls with no social standards to keep up lived cheaply, but were commonly recruited from men who had parted company with their colleges through delinquency or marriage or failure in examinations [Ward, op cit]. This criticism is not entirely fair – men of ability, such as Montague Burrowes, a mature student and a married man, also found it easier to enter a hall, rather than one of the colleges. An undated memorandum, among Michell’s papers, records that in the period 1822-1874, members of Magdalen Hall obtained 22 Firsts, 57 Seconds, 75 Thirds and 70 Fourths in the Public Examinations [X-HC/GOV/1/1/58]. Charges for board, lodgings and tuition were moderate, Macbride told the 1850 Royal Commission ‘never exceeding at Magdalene Hall, and I believe in other Societies, 80l a year, and in many instances, scarcely reaching 70l’ and he cited figures to show that the lowest battels bill run up by a member of Magdalen Hall in 1849 came to only £55 192 1d (the highest was £91 9s 2d), concluding that ‘I do not conceive that expenses could be materially diminished’ [Parliamentary Papers 1852, XXII 1; pp. 219-220]. It is true that some colleges could match these modest figures – the lowest battels bill in Lincoln in 1849 was a mere £43 6s 3d – but they were the exception; the average battels bill in Merton College for that year was £120 pa. At Pembroke, Francis Jeune was determined to reduce the costs of a University education, and thus attract greater numbers to his college, by cutting undergraduates’ battels bills – to this end, he introduced fixed kitchen charges and ordered the porter to confiscate all pastries, a notorious sources of expense, at the gate.
In the age of University reform, Magdalen Hall seemed to provide a clear example of an educational institution that gave value for money – in terms of the numbers of undergraduates educated; an ‘open doors’ policy, with regard to admissions and the award of its scholarships and exhibitions, and an economical life-style. One might be tempted into making comparisons with Hertford College of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, its very success was to prove its undoing, as these principles found imitators in other University institutions and the new category of ‘Unattached Students’, introduced after 1868, who were allowed to live in approved private lodgings, under the supervision of a delegacy and without joining any hall or college, provided for that type of undergraduate who had formerly attended institutions like Magdalen Hall. Such developments posed a grave threat to an institution with scarcely any endowments, that depended for its financial survival on the income from the room rents, tuition fees and College charges paid by its undergraduate members.
Macbride was succeeded as Principal of Magdalen Hall, in 1868, by Richard Michell, who continued his policies, launching a Scholarship Augmentation Fund, raised by subscription, to increase the number and value of open scholarships. However, circumstances had changed, and, in 1873 Michell complained to the Universities Commission, established to investigate the finances of Oxford and Cambridge, that the Principal’s income had dropped by £50 p.a., every year since Macbride’s death.
This development he attributed to four causes –
‘1. The introduction of unattached students.
2. The permission given to Colleges to allow their young men to live entirely out of College. This has been and is most detrimental to all the Halls.
3. The creation of Keble College.
4. The (almost) extinction of gentlemen commoners’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/57].
Halls only survived because of their ability to attract undergraduates and because most colleges, secure in their landed endowments, did not need to compete for the same market. Once the colleges began to expand; once the University permitted non-collegiate students and once a new college had been founded, with an avowed aim of providing an economical education and, moreover, dependant on revenue from undergraduate numbers rather than its endowments, the halls were doomed. For, as DP Chase, Vice-Principal of St Mary Hall, was to the University Commission of 1877 – ‘no man ever enters at a hall who can gain admission or remain at a College’ [Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, Vol III, p. 130]. The verdict of that Commission was to condemn all the remaining halls to extinction, upon the death of their respective Principals, a fate from which only St. Edmund Hall was reprieved, thanks, in part, to the longevity of its head. Michell seems to have anticipated this, and decided that the only way to save Magdalen Hall was through its incorporation, as a College.
The proposal for the transmutation of Magdalen Hall into Hertford College was not a new one. In an undated memorandum, Michell noted that the idea was ‘coeval with the change of site. 1823 Dr Stuchley & Hewlett frequently agitated during the late principal’s life-time’ but that it had remained dormant until 1873 ‘when owing to the changes in the University and also to rumours circulated (not without foundation) I determined to sounds the member of the Hall orally and by letter’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/53-54]. Michell sent out a circular to as many old member of Magdalen Hall as he could contact, to canvas opinion on the proposal and to raise money for the necessary private Act of Parliament. The response was overwhelmingly favourable and a petition was drawn up ‘for the Revival and Restoration of the name, title and privileges of Hertford College, suspended since the year 1823’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/7].
The aim of the bill was simple – the incorporation of the Principal and Scholars of Magdalen Hall ‘into one Body Corporate Collegiate and Politic under the of “The Principal and Scholars of Hertford College in the University of Oxford” and as such shall have perpetual succession and a Common Seal and by that name shall sue and be sued and may purchase take hold and dispose of lands and other property either absolutely or subject to any trusts and shall for all purposes deemed to be a College of the University’. No Fellows are mentioned in the official designation because there were no endowments to pay for Fellowships – tuition would remain in the hands of the paid tutors. The only endowments that the new College would possess would be the endowments of Magdalen Hall, transferred to it by the trustees who administered them.
The most radical change, not mentioned in the bill, would be the creation of a Council of influential men, to govern the new College and, in effect, to act as trustees. According to an undated memorandum by Michell – ‘The Principal and Council should have all the powers and discharge all the functions usually belonging to the head and Fellows in the older Colleges’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/6]. This scheme was clearly influenced by the constitution of the newly established Keble College, which was governed by a Warden and Council of distinguished non-resident members of the University, although tutors, as ex-officio Fellows, were to have a voice on the Council that they were denied at Keble. His list of Council members included the Archbishop of Canterbury; four Bishops; two Earls and three MPs – all potential sources, directly or indirectly, of patronage and endowments for the new College.
As the new year of 1874 opened, he began to approach the names on his list, when, toward the end of February, he received an unexpected letter from one Thomas Charles Baring ‘late Fellow of BNC & MP for S Essex’. The letter was short and came straight to the point – ‘I see it stated in the papers that your Hall is going to be incorporated as ‘The Principal and Scholars of Hertford College’. I have recently offered to found at Brasenose on certain conditions a certain number of Fellowships. This offer has been declined and I am willing to make a similar offer to Hertford. The principal and only essential conditions are 1st that the Fellowships shall be absolutely open to all member of the Church of England who are unmarried and 2nd. that I should name the first holders of these Fellowships undertaking to name no one who has not taken at least on 1st class’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/15].
Baring was a member of the prominent banking dynasty, founded by his grandfather, and the son of Charles Baring, the strongly evangelical Bishop of Durham (1861- 1879) who had devoted his career and his personal wealth to the work of church extension in his diocese. His son, acting from similar motives, had offered an endowment of £50,000 to establish eight Fellowships at Brasenose, confined to unmarried members of the Church of England, on condition that the money would revert to Baring or his heirs if this restriction was ever broken. This was a reactionary and direct challenge to the Universities Tests Act of 1871 (34 Vict Cap 26), which had freed all persons holding lay academic or collegiate office from the obligation to subscribe to any formulary of faith or make any declaration or oath respecting their religious beliefs and thee lawyers consulted by Brasenose stated that ‘it will be difficult, probably impossible to give legal effect to the donors wishes’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/16]. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that Brasenose declined the offer.
Baring’s response was to draft a private member’s bill ‘to explain the Universities Tests Act’, that would allow colleges, in the future, to accept endowments confined to persons who ‘belong & continue to belong to any Church, Sect or denomination and to make or subscribe any declaration relative thereunto’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/26] and it was at this point that he first contacted Richard Michell. Much of his subsequent negotiations with Michell came through the intermediary of a young lawyer named FH Jeune, the son of the reforming Master of Pembroke College. In March, Jeune enthusiastically expounded Baring’s proposals for what he described as a ‘really liberal idea. A college of the Church of England limited to no sects within the Church’, perhaps an indirect reference to Keble, which, to evangelical churchmen, was a college of the High Church ‘sect’ and an instrument for propagating its partisan views and training its partisan clergy. Baring offered – an immediate endowment of £75,000 for Fellowships, and more to come; twenty Scholarships and money to purchase College livings. To realise his ends, Baring’s private bill should be amalgamated with that for the incorporation of Magdalen hall, so that ‘the alteration of the Repeal of the Tests Act would be limited to Hertford College & would therefore excite less opposition’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/27].
Jeune, Michell and Baring all underestimated the strength of the opposition to the any move against the Universities Tests Act and, in consequence, the smooth passage of the whole Hertford College bill was threatened. Gladstone himself wrote to Michell, expressing his fears of ‘points in the Bill which seem open to serious objection’ and asked for an authoritative statement on ‘the views with which the Hertford College Bill has been framed’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/112]. In order to overcome such opposition, a new clause had to be added – ‘Nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to repeal any of the provisions of the University Tests Act, 1871’, frustrating Baring’s plan’s to give statutory expression to his ‘college of the Church of England’ and obliging him to resort to a future private arrangement with the College authorities.
The Hertford College Act (37 & 38 Vict cap 55) became law on August 7th, 1874. It provided for the dissolution of Magdalen Hall and the transfer of its lands and properties to the new collegiate body – ‘The Principal, Fellows, and Scholars of Hertford college’ – as in Michell’s original bill, but an additional endowment of £30,000 now stood in the name of the Chancellor of Oxford University, for transfer to the new College, to endow Fellowships and the first two Fellows – FH Jeune and MJ Muir Mackenzie – were named in the Act. What the Act did not say, was that this endowment had been provided by TC Baring and that he had nominated the Fellows. The rights of the existing Scholars and member of Magdalen hall were safeguarded; two of its members – the Rev Robert Gandell and the Rev GS Ward, who had been a tutor, were given un-endowed Fellowships of Hertford College and Michell was to become its Principal. The Chancellor of the University, who had been Visitor of Magdalen Hall, and indeed, of all the halls, was to remain Visitor of Hertford College. The Principal and Fellows were required to draw up a set of Statutes, subject to confirmation by the Chancellor of the University and the Queen in Council, by March 1 st 1876 and were empowered to accept endowments.
Statutes were drawn up and approved by the Privy Council in March 1875. The Principal and Fellows were to form the Governing Body of the College; the powers and duties of the Principal were defined; the £30,000 endowment was appropriated to maintain five Fellows, to be elected by the Governing Body, and who were to be unmarried and possess BA degrees of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge or Dublin; the Governing Body was to elect Scholars and Exhibitioners; the Tutors, who were to ‘superintend the studies and conduct of the pupils committed to them’ (not necessarily Fellows) were to be those who had held the office of Tutors of Magdalen Hall and, thereafter, be appointed by the Principal; the offices of Dean, Bursar and lecturers were established and an Educational committee of the Governing Body was appointed to ‘superintend the work of education in the College’ and to examine admissions candidates for commoners places [X-HC/GOV/2/1].
Hertford College was now, in form at least, a fully-fledged college of the University, incorporated by Act of parliament and with a body of Statutes to regulate its corporate life. It was to be given its substance by Baring in a series of magnificent benefactions, announced first by letter and later, in 1880, formalised in four deeds of trust. ‘Munificent proposals’, remarked Lord Salisbury, the Chancellor of the University, in a letter to FH Jeune, giving his consent to their acceptance – ‘it is pleasant to reflect that the race of great Founders is not extinct: & that the modern Church of England is able to show one of the greatest’ [X-HC/GOV/1/1/128]. Indeed, Baring’s role in the foundation of Hertford college came to completely overshadow that of Michell and the editor of Michell’s Crewian orations, published posthumously, set out to refute the popular misconception, not yet extinct, that the College was ‘thee creation of an anonymous benefactor’, by stating, in no uncertain terms that ‘the credit of having converted Magdalen Hall into Hertford College belongs purely and simply to Dr Michell’. Without Baring’s approaches, ‘the great probability is that it would have been effected earlier and with much more ease, inasmuch as there was nothing in the original draft of the bill to arouse opposition in the House of Commons. In such a case the hall would not have suddenly risen to the level of a rich College. But it would have become a college all the same; which is the essential point’ [Michell, R. Orationes Creweiana (1878) ; Appendix C].
Baring had insisted that his name be kept out of the newspapers – there were conditions attached to his endowments that might have led to an outburst of hostility against the fledgling college. To ensure that these conditions were observed, the endowments were transferred, not to the Governing Body of the College, but to a body of self-perpetuating trustees – Baring, the principal, Robert Gandell, RH Jeune and Lord Francis Hervey. The endowments took the form of 5% Railway or Government stock - £100,000 to pay the stipends of the Dean, Bursar and seven Lecturers; £50,000 to endow 10 Fellowships for the unmarried; £14,000 for the stipends of 2 married Fellows and £65,000 to endow 30 scholarships, tenable for 5 years. The conditions were that all the holders of these offices, Fellowships and Scholarships, apart from the Lecturers, were to be members of the church of England, or certain other Protestant episcopal churches – a deliberate attempt to flout the Universities Tests Act Baring himself was to nominate all thee first holders of the Fellowships. In addition, twelve of the scholarships were closed – restricted to persons educated at harrow school; to persons educated in Essex; to the sons of Fellows of Brasenose and Hertford and to persons lineally descended from Sir Francis Baring, Charles Sealey or JL Wendell.
The whole impetus of the University reform movement after 1850 had been directed towards the abolition of religious tests, closed scholarships and Founder’s kin provisions – now, within the body of Hertford College, they had all been reborn, an irony only heightened by the ‘open doors’ policy that had been pursued by its progenitor in pre-reform Oxford – Magdalen hall. Established on a firm financial basis, the comfortable security of annual dividends engendered conservatism and smothered the dynamic for expansion, not to be re-kindled until the 1960s.