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 to London, and there lodged in the Tower on a charge of high treason.
“On Jan. 7, 1689, the Fellows of University deputed Master Babman to go to him and ask him if he would resign his post, to whom, after deliberation lasting many days, Walker answered that he would not.
“On Jan. 22, after this answer had been brought to Oxford and conveyed to the Vice-Chancellor, the latter summoned the Fellows to appear before the Visitors on Jan. 26, in the Apodyterium of the Venerable House of Convocation.
“Where on Jan. 26, between 9 and 10 a.m., there appeared in person and as representing the College the following Fellows—Mr. Will. Smith, Tho. Babman, Tho. Bennet, Francis Forster, and besought the Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, and Doctors of Divinity representing Convocation to remedy certain grievances in the College, specially concerning the Master and two Fellows. To them a citation was then issued by the Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, Doctors of Divinity, and others, as the ordinary and legitimate patrons and visitors of the College, to appear before them in the College Chapel on Monday, Feb. 4 following between 8–9 a.m.
“On the appointed day there met in the chapel between 8–9 a.m. the Vice-Chancellor, Gilbert Ironsyde, S.T.P., Rob. Say, Byron Eaton, Master of Oriel, W. Lovett, Tho. Hyde, Chief Librarian, Tho. Turner, President of C.C.C., Jonath. Edwards, S.T.P., Thom. Dunstan, Pres. of Magdalen College, Will. Christmas, Jun. Proctor, and others. After the Litany had been repeated, the Vice-Chancellor prorogued the meeting to the common-room, where were present the afore-mentioned Fellows, and in addition Edw. Farrar, Jo. Gilve, Jo. Nailor, Jo. Hudson. The Fellows preferred a complaint that the statutes of the Realm, of the University, and of the College had been violated by Obadiah Walker, Master or Senior Fellow of the College. They objected in particular that he had left the religion of the Anglican Church, established and confirmed by the statutes of this Realm, and betaken himself to the Roman or papistical religion; that he had held, fostered, and frequented illegal conventicles within the aforesaid College; that he had procured to be sequestred unto wrong uses and against the statutes the income and emoluments of the Society; also that he had had printed books against the Reformed religion, and that within the College, and had published the same unto the grave scandal as well of the University as of the College. All these charges were amply proved by trustworthy witnesses, whereupon the visitors decreed that the post of Mr. Obadiah Walker was void and vacant. At the same time, at the instance of the said Fellows, Masters Boyse and Deane, Fellows of the College, who had left the religion of the reformed Anglican Church, were ordered to be proceeded against so soon as a new Master or Senior Fellow was chosen.”
Mr. Obadiah Walker lived for many years after the accession of William and Mary. He was a man of great piety and vast and varied learning, as is shown by his books upon Religion, Logic, History, and Geography. He wrote a book upon Greenland, and made experiments in physics. A near friend of the great benefactor of the College, Dr. John Radcliffe, he sought to convert that famous physician to the Roman faith, but found him as little inclined to believe in transubstantiation as “that the phial in his hand was a wheelbarrow.” In spite of their want of religious sympathy, however, the two men liked each other’s society, and the great physician, who respected Walker’s learning, gave him a competency during the latter years of his life. In the College archives is an elegant letter addressed by O. Walker, then Master, to Radcliffe, thanking him for his gift of the east window of the College chapel. It runs thus:
“Sir, we return you our humble and hearty thanks for your noble and illustrious benefaction to this ancient foundation; your generosity hath supplyed a defect and covered a blemish in our chapell; the other lesse eminent windows seemed to upbraid the chiefest as being more adorned and regardable than that which ought to be most splendid; till you was pleased to compassionate us and ennoble the best with the best work. Other benefactions are to be sought out in registers and memorialls, yours is conveyed with the light. The rising sun displays the gallantry of your spirit, and withall puts us in mind as often as we enter to our devotions to remember you and your good actions towards us. Nor can we salute the morning light without meditating on ye Shepherds and ye Angells adoring the true Sun. And yr holy praise and prostration by your singular favour is continually proposed, as to our sight and consideration, so to our example also. And so we do accept and acknowledge it, not only as an object moving our devotions, but as praise of ye artificer who hath not only observed much better decorum and proportion in his figures, but hath all so ingeniously contrived that the light shall not be hindred as by ye daubery of ye others.”—The letter concludes with a prayer that Dr. Radcliffe may prosper in his profession.
The following quaint “letter sent by the College to begge contributions towards the building the East Side of the quadrangle about ye end of 1674 or beginning of 1675 to the gentlemen in the North Parts” may fitly conclude our notice of this college (vide MSS. W. Smith, x. 239).
“Gentlemen,
“Your aged mother, and not yours alone, but of this whole University, if not all other such nurseries of Learning, at least in this nation, craves your assistance in the Time of her Necessity. It is not long since her walls Ruining and her Buildings, almost, after so many years, decayed; It pleased God to excite two of her sonnes in especiall manner, Mr Charles Greenwood, the tutor, and Sr Simon Benett, his pupill, to compassionate her decay, Repair her Ruins and Renew with Great Augmentation her former glory. But the late civil warrs and other alterations intervening not only
