"Outspake the (Warden) roundly:
'The bridge must straight go down;
For if they once should get the bridge ...'"
MACAULAY, /Horatius/, adapted.
Academic bridges, over the Cam or elsewhere, are a great feature at Cambridge. At Oxford they were unknown till this century, when University first of all threw its modest little arch over Logic Lane; later, in 1913. the "Bridge of Sighs," which forms the subject of Plate XXIV, was completed. There was a hard struggle before leave could be obtained from the City Council for thus bridging a public thoroughfare; University only maintained their claim to a bridge by a long lawsuit, in which the college rights were firmly established by the production of charters, which went back to the reign of King John. The great opposition to the Hertford Bridge was said to be due to regard for the feelings of the old Warden of New College, who considered that it would injure the view of his college bell-tower. Whether this story be true or not, Hertford obtained its permission at last, and Sir Thomas Jackson added a new attraction to Oxford's buildings. His genius has been especially shown in triumphing over the difficulties of the Hertford site, for it was no easy thing to unite into a harmonious whole, buildings so various; his new chapel - opened in 1908 - is worthy to rank with the best classic architecture in Oxford.
The variety of the Hertford buildings only reflects the chequered history of the foundations that have occupied them. As early as the thirteenth century Hart Hall stood on this site. In the eighteenth century this old hall was turned into a college by an Oxford reformer, Dr. Newton. But unfortunately Newton's endowments were not equal to his ambition, and the first Hertford /College/ fell into such decay that finally its buildings were transferred to an entirely different foundation, Magdalen Hall. Almost immediately afterwards, old Magdalen Hall, which stood close to Magdalen College, was burned down, and the society sold their site, thus made empty, to their wealthy namesake, and migrated, in 1822, to what had formerly been Hertford College. Finally, in 1874, Magdalen Hall was re-endowed by the head of the great financial house of Baring as "Hertford College" once more.
This college then unites the traditions of two old halls, and of its own predecessor, and from all of them it derives some famous names. Hart Hall was the home of John Selden, one of the greatest of English scholars; Hertford College had an undistinguished English prime minister in Henry Pelham, and a most distinguished leader of opposition in Charles James Foxe; while Magdalen Hall was even more rich in traditions, as being the home of the translator of the Bible, William Tyndale, as the centre of Puritan strength in the Laudian days, when from its ranks were filled the vacancies all over Oxford caused by the expulsions of Royalists, and finally as having trained Lord Clarendon, famous as Charles II's minister, still more famous as the historian, whose monumental work was one of the first endowments of the Oxford Press.
All these traditions are now concentrated in the one college, and, as has been said, the buildings have been greatly extended to meet the needs of the new foundation. When Hertford College is completed according to the plans already drawn by Sir Thomas Jackson, it will reach from All Souls' to Holywell. This last northern part of its front has been delayed by the European War.
The new - or, rather, the revived - college has, as yet, hardly had time to make Oxford history, but the influence of its second Principal. Dr. Boyd, whose long reign, happily not yet over, began in 1877, has had the result of finding for Oxford new benefactors in one of the wealthiest of the London City Companies; the Drapers' magnificent gifts of the new Science Library and of the Electrical Laboratory are good instances to show that the days of the "pious founder" are not yet over.