Coming to the seventeenth century, we find a Mr. Charles Greenwood, a past-Fellow, leaving a handsome bequest to the College, out of which, however, only £1500 was secured from his executors, which money paid for the present fabric to be partially raised; the north side of the quadrangle, the chapel, and hall and old library being first begun A.D. 1634. The present library was partly built out of money given by the executors and trustees of the second Lord Eldon, past-Fellow of the College. It shelters the colossal twin-image of his kinsmen, and was designed by Sir G. G. Scott, and is better suited to be a chapel than a library. Then in 1631, Sir Simon Bennet, a relative and college pupil of Mr. Greenwood’s, left lands in Northampton to maintain eight Fellows and eight scholars; though they turned out sufficient to maintain but four of each sort. The last great benefactor of this century was the famous Dr. Radcliffe, formerly senior scholar, of whom the eastern quadrangle, built by his munificence, remains as a monument. Beside completing the fabrics he founded two medical Fellowships, and, dying in 1734, bequeathed in trust to the College for its uses his estate of Linton in Yorkshire.
It is beyond the limits of a short article to narrate all the vicissitudes which during the epochs of the Reformation and Commonwealth the College underwent. In the reign of Elizabeth it sided with the Roman Catholics, and the Master and several Fellows were ejected on that account. Later on, in 1642, the College lent its plate, consisting of a silver flagon, 8 potts, 9 tankards, 18 bowles, one candle-pott, and a salt-sellar to King Charles I., one flagon alone being kept for the use of the Communion. The gross weight as weighed at the mint was 738 oz. The Fellows and commoners also contributed on 30th July, 1636, the sum of 19li. 10s. for entertaining the king; and again on 17th Feb., 1636, 4li. 17s. 6d. Subsequently the College sustained for many months 28 soldiers at the rate of 22li. 8s. per month. After all this show of loyalty we expect to learn that Cromwell ejected the Master, Thomas Walker, and instituted a Roundhead, Joshua Hoyle, in his place.
Another member of the College of the same name, but who achieved more fame, was Obadiah Walker, who was already a Fellow under Thomas Walker’s mastership, and was ejected by the Long Parliament along with him, and also with his old tutor, Mr. Abraham Woodhead. Woodhead and O. Walker retired abroad and visited Rome and many other places. At the Restoration they both regained their Fellowships, but Woodhead never more conformed to the English Church. O. Walker, however, continued to take the Sacrament in the College chapel, and after that he was elected Master distributed it to the other Fellows, till, on the accession of James II., he “openly declared himself a Romanist, and got a dispensation from his Majesty for himself and two Fellows, his converts, who held their places till the king’s flight, notwithstanding the laws to the contrary.” William Smith, who was a resident Fellow at the time, has “many good things to say of Obadiah Walker, as that he was neither proud nor covetous, and framed his usual discourse against the Puritans on one side, and the Jesuits on the other, as the chief disturbers of the peace, and hinderers of all concessions and agreement amongst all true members of the Catholic Church.” He complains, however, that “as soon as he declared himself a Roman Catholic, he provided him and his party of Jesuits for their Priests; concerning the first of which (I think he went by the name of Mr. Edwards) there is this remarkable story, that having had mass said for some time in a garret, he afterwards procured a mandate from K. James to seize on the lower half of a side of the quadrangle, next adjoining to the College chapel, by which he deprived us of two low rooms, their studies and their bed-chambers; and after all the partitions were removed, it was someway or other consecrated, as we suppose, to Divine services; for they had mass there every day, and sermons at least in the afternoons on the Lord’s Day.”
Smith goes on to relate how the Jesuit chaplain was one day preaching from the text, “So run that you may obtain,” when one of many Protestants, who were harkening at the outside of the windows in the quadrangle, discovering that the Jesuit was preaching a sermon of Mr. Henry Smith, which he had at home by him, went and fetched the book, and read at the outside of the window what the Jesuit was preaching within. For this it seems the particular Jesuit got into trouble. Smith complains also that by mandate of the king, Walker sequestred a Fellowship towards the maintenance of his priest, and incurred the College much expense in putting up the statue of James II., presented by a Romanist,[6] over the inside of a gate-house. He adds that “Mr. Walker that had the king’s ear, and entertained him at vespers in their chapel, and shewed the king the painted windows in our own, so that the king could not but see his own statue in coming out of it, never had the Prudence nor kindness to the College, as to request the least favour to the society from him.”
That Mr. William Smith, who writes the above, could also make himself a persona grata to the great men of State who came to Oxford to attend on the king, we see from the following letter written by Lord Conyers, who in 1681 lodged with his son in University College, on the occasion of the Parliament meeting in Oxford. It is dated Easter Thursday, London, 1681, and is as follows (MSS. Smith):—
“Sir,
I cannot satisfy my wife without giving you this trouble of my thanks for your very greate kindnesse to me and my sonn: we gott hither in v. good time on Thursday to waite on ye king before night; who was in a course of physick, but God be praised is v. well & walked yesterday round Hide Parke. My son also desires his humble services to you: And we both of us desire our services & thanks to Mr. Ledgard & Mr. Smith for yr great civilities to us; & whenever I can serve any of you or the College, be most confident to find me
“Yr most affect. friend &
“humble Servant
“Conyers.”
In 1680, March 30, London, Lord Conyers writes to O. Walker about sending his son to the College, “who is growne too bigge for schoole tho’ little I fear in scholarship … he is very towardly & capable to be made a scholar.” He desires [letter of London, April 9, 1682] Mr. Walker to provide a tutor for “his young man.”
Smith’s account of Obadiah Walker’s doings at the College is fitly completed by the following passage from a letter sent by a Romanist priest at Oxford, Father Henry Pelham, to the Provincial of the Jesuits, Father John Clare (Sir John Warner, Bart.), preserved in the Public Record Office in Brussels, and given in Bloxam’s Magdalen College and James II. (p. 227)—
“Oxford, 1690, May 2.—Hon. Sir, You are desirous to know how things are with us in these troublous times, since trade (religion) is so much decayed. I can only say that in the general decline of trade we have had our share. For before this turn we were in a very hopeful way, for we had three public shops (chapels) open in Oxford. One did wholly belong to us, and good custom we had, viz. the University (University College Chapel); but now it is shut up. The Master was taken, and has been ever since in prison, and the rest forced to abscond.”
Thus ended the last attempt to force the Romanist religion upon Oxford. In the following December we find “Obadiah Walker” in the list of prisoners remaining at Faversham under a strong guard until the 30th of December, and then conducted some to the Tower, some to Newgate, and others released. Mr. Obadiah Walker lived for many years afterwards, and added to the literary work he had already accomplished in Oxford a history of the Ejected Clergy. His memory long survived in Oxford, and with the mob was kept alive in a doggrel ballad which bore the refrain, “Old Obadiah sings Ave Maria.”
In University College, under Obadiah Walker, were focussed all the propagandist influences of the time. Dr. John Massey, Dean of Christchurch, 1686, referred to in Pelham’s letter, was originally a member of University College, and was converted by Obadiah Walker. There was also a printing press kept going in University to publish books of a Romanist tendency, which the University would not authorize to be printed by its Press.
The official College record (in the Register of Election) of the deposition of Mr. Obadiah Walker from the headship of the College is as follows (MSS. of Will. Smith, vol. vii. p. 113)—
“About the middle of Dec., A.D. 1688, Mr. Obadiah Walker attempted to flee abroad, but was taken at Sittingbourne in Kent, and carried