than distasteful, for
its fulfilment would have meant a confession of sacrilege committed by
her father and acquiesced in by herself: it would have meant also the
establishment of a college beyond the sea, removed from the Founder's
supervision and control. No one who knows human nature, or daughters,
or Dorothy Wadham, can regard the story as more than an interesting
fiction. And yet, is there no foundation for Wood's circumstantial
narrative? Does the fact that the Foundress was presented as a Recusant
mean nothing? The problem is one worthy of the industry and ingenuity of
Mr Andrew Lang.

The Founder died at the age of seventy-seven years in 1609. He was
buried in "Myne Ile at Ilminster, where myne ancestors lye interred."
The funeral was one befitting, in the estimation of those days, the
obsequies of an important country gentleman: it cost L500, equivalent
now to a sum sufficient for the public funeral of some great statesman.
It is easy to condemn our ancestors; but their modes of extravagance
were less frivolous than ours, if equally irrational.

The building accounts have been preserved in the account-book treasured
in the College archives: in it is recorded "every item of stone, wood,
or metal used, and every workman's name and weekly wages," an important
contribution to the history of prices. The architect was William
Arnold, who combined in himself, as did architects in the middle ages
and later, the functions of head workman, master mason, architect, and
clerk of works in one--a master builder. The stones came from the
quarries at Headington and Shotover; the slates from Stonesfield and
Burford. Part of the beauty of the College is due to the soft colouring
of the silver-grey stone, honeycombed and crumbled, on the south and
west especially, where sun and wind and rain beat on it, giving it the
appearance of indefinite antiquity; an appearance due, alas! also to the
fact that stone from Headington is very friable, and little able to
resist the Oxford air.

One of the true College stories runs to the effect that Warden Griffiths
used the account-book to refute the contention of a great historian of
British architecture that Wadham College must have been built at
different dates, because its architecture is of different styles--an
improper combination of Jacobean and Perpendicular. Dr Griffiths was the
kindliest of men, but the most accurate, and it gave him, for he was
human, great pleasure to correct mis