ALL SOULS’ COLLEGE

The college stands in the angle between the High and Catte Street. Founded by Archbishop Henry Chichele of Canterbury in 1438, its primary purpose was to house forty priests who were to say Mass for the souls of Henry V and all who had died in the wars against France. It is possible that Chichele also wished the college to be a reparation for the death of St Joan of Arc.[1] Apart from their duties at the altar, the priests were to occupy themselves in study. There were to be no undergraduates though, later, four bible clerks were in residence for a time. Despite the fact that the priests were expelled at the Reforma­tion, the college still restricts its membership to graduates. A fellow­ship of All Souls’ continues to be one of the highest academic dis­tinctions in the kingdom and provides leisure for research work and lecturing.

The first quadrangle, including the chapel, is fifteenth-century work, but the rest belongs to a later period. The figures in the chapel reredos were destroyed and the framework which remained was covered up with plaster at some unspecified date after the Reformation. Its exist­ence was forgotten until 1872, when it was accidentally discovered. New statues, with faces modelled on those of the fellows who happened to be in residence at the time, were made and placed in the niches. The story of these reredoses is always the same. They became fashion­able in the very late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries when the attraction of the great east window was passing. At the Reformation the figures were destroyed but the screen in which they stood was usually left alone, though it was frequently mutilated. In the eighteenth century many of them were tidied up, some being rubbed down to make a flat wall. In Victorian times, when interest in medieval archi­tecture revived, some were restored and new figures placed in them. The result was often unhappy. (From Goulder, Pilgrimage Pamphlets: Oxford & Cambridge, 1963)

The endowment for All Souls was partly provided by the confiscation of ‘alien’ religious houses carried out by Henry V at the close of the French wars: an example, like Wolsey’s foundation of what became Christ Church, of property from institutions suppressed for one reason or another being used for new foundations – a practice discontinued by Henry VIII and his Protestant successors, who preferred to take the money for themselves. All Souls is also a good example of the role in education and scholarship played by chantries, institutions supporting priests to say Mass for the dead, usually of a particular family. Having performed his duty of saying Mass each morning, a chantry priest was free to devote himself to teaching, research, or, in many cases, assisting the local parish priest in his pastoral work. The chantries were suppressed, and their assets seized, by Henry VIII’s son Edward.

Above the gate, on the tower, can be seen a relief showing the souls in Purgatory, and an angel . delivering them: the original purpose of the College. See also their site.

[1] Lived c. 1410-1431