Note 307 — XVII. WADHAM COLLEGE.

Wood quotes no authority, and his story of the founder’s intentions is inconsistent in one or two points with the curious old (though not contemporary) MS. account of the last wishes of the founder, which is among the papers of Wadham College. Dorothy Wadham, however, was certainly a Recusant not long before her death (cf. Calendar of State Papers, 1619-1623, p. 330); it may perhaps be conjectured that the atrocity of the Gunpowder Plot alienated her husband from his co-religionists, and induced him to conform to the National Church.