Magdalene College (pronounced ) was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary Magdalene, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The refoundation was largely the work of Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII. Audley also gave the College its motto - 'garde ta foy' - keep your faith. Audley's successors in the Mastership and as benefactors of the College were however prone to dire ends; several benefactors were arraigned at various stages on charges of high treason and executed.
The College's most famous son is Samuel Pepys, whose papers and books were donated to the College upon his death, and are now housed in the Pepys Library, the most beautiful building within the College. Magdalene is both famous and notorious for its 'traditional' style, boasting both a well-regarded formal hall (held every evening) and the distinction of having been the last previously all-male College in Oxford or Cambridge to admit women in 1988 (Oriel College was the last in Oxford, admitting women in 1984).
Aesthetically Magdalene's old College buildings are beautiful if representative of the College's ramshackle growth from a monks' foundation into a centre of education. It's also distinctive in that most of the old buildings are in brick rather than stone (save for the frontage of the Pepys Library).
Magdalene remains, despite expansion in the twentieth century, one of the smaller colleges within the University, at last count numbering over 300 undergraduates and an expanding postgraduate community.
Notable Old Members
- Samuel Pepys (diarist)
- Sir Samuel Morland (diplomat, spy, inventor, mathematician)
- Sir Michael Redgrave (actor)
- George Mallory (mountaineer)
- Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory (air vice marshal, Battle of Britain)
- Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder (Marshal of the Royal Air Force, World War II)
- John Simpson (journalist)
- Bamber Gascoigne (TV presenter, University Challenge)
- Alan Rusbridger (editor, The Guardian)
- Gavin Hastings OBE (rugby international)
- Charles Stewart Parnell (Irish nationalist)
- Sir Anthony Jay (author, Yes, Minister)
- C.S. Lewis (author and theologian)
- Henry Dunster (first President of Harvard University).
- A C Benson (librettist of Land of Hope and Glory)
- Patrick Blackett (Nobel Prize winning physicist)
- Charles Kingsley (author of The Water Babies and Regius Professor of Modern History)
- Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury and graduate of Jesus College; Fellow of Magdalene)
- Sir F.G.H. Salusbury (Editor of the London Herald, later the last Governor General of the Suez Canal)
Honorary Fellows have included
Quote
"Magdalene to go co-ed: State school pupils to be admitted" - headline in student newspaper Stop Press (previously known as Varsity) in the mid-1980s at the time of dispute over admission of women.
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