on: of the fifteen Fellows, eleven--of the
fifteen Scholars, ten, came from western counties, especially from
Somerset; the Commoners also were many of them western men. The value to
a College of a local connection, not with a village or a small school,
but with a county or a large town, was not understood by the
Commissioners of 1853: they were under the tyranny of the formulae
current in their day, when "open competition" was supposed to be the
solution of all the difficulties of life.

In the first year of the College now opened for work, fifty-one
undergraduates, including the Scholars, were admitted. The number of its
inmates, from the Warden to the latest freshman, was therefore
sixty-nine, including the two chaplains. The rooms were larger than most
of the rooms in the older colleges, but fewer, and those available for
undergraduates were not more than about forty: the freshmen of 1613 must
have been closely packed, the Scholars especially, who had rooms three
together, sleeping in the large chamber and working in the _muscoelae_
or small studies attached, now used as bedrooms, or as scouts' pantries.
In the nine years following the admissions were necessarily
fewer--averaging twenty-seven. It is probable that till the depletion of
Oxford, when the Civil War began--_i.e._, during the first thirty years
of its life--Wadham numbered on an average between eighty and ninety
undergraduates, all of them resident in College, as was then required by
the Statutes of the University. This estimate is based on imperfect
data, and Mr Gardiner has pronounced that materials for any accurate
calculation are not to be found. We do not know what was the usual
length of undergraduates' residence at that time; some resided only for
a year, some proceeded to a degree. Nor is it clear whether the Warden
used all the rooms, eight in number, assigned to him, or gave, perhaps
rented, some of them to undergraduates. The estimate, which can neither
be confirmed nor disproved, is worth making only as helping us to
imagine the condition of the College in its early days. One thing is
certain, that Wadham was popular and fashionable, to use a modern
curious name, as is shown by the record of admissions.

Life, both for graduates and undergraduates, was harder then than it is
now. The Fellows were required to reside for forty-six weeks, the
Scholars, and probably the Commoners, for forty-eight weeks in each
year. All undergraduates had to atte