To the very early days of Magdalen belongs its connection with the
Oxford Reform Movement and the Revival of Learning. Both Fox and
Wolsey, successively Bishops of Winchester, and the munificent
founders of Corpus and of Cardinal (i.e. Christ Church) Colleges,
were members of Waynflete's foundation, and so probably was John
Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, whose learning and piety so impressed
Erasmus. "When I listen to my beloved Colet," he writes in 1499, "I
seem to be listening to Plato himself"; and he asks--why go to Italy
when Oxford can supply a climate "as charming as it is healthful" and
"such culture and learning, deep, exact and worthy of the good old
times ?" Erasmus' praise of Oxford climate is unusual from a
foreigner; the more usual view is that of his friend Vives, who came
to Oxford soon after as a lecturer at the new college of Corpus
Christi; he writes from Oxford: "The weather here is windy, foggy and
damp, and gave me a rough reception."

Colet's lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, perhaps delivered in
Magdalen College, marked an epoch in the way of the interpretation of
Holy Scripture, by their freedom from traditional methods and by
their endeavour to employ the best of the New Learning in determining
the real meaning of the Apostle. To the same school as Colet in the
Church belonged Reginald Pole, Archbishop in the gloomy days of Queen
Mary, the only Magdalen man who has held the See of Canterbury.

Elizabeth visited the College, and gently rebuked the Puritan
tendencies of the then President, Dr. Humphrey, who carried his
scruples so far as to object to the academical scarlet he had to wear
as a Doctor of Divinity, because it savoured of the "Scarlet Woman."
"Dr. Humphrey," said the queen, with the tact alike of a Tudor