‘Did I, I wonder, talk too much?’

Abstract

Abstract Magdalene College in 1925 was just emerging from an extremely long period in the doldrums. Established as a Benedictine Monks’ Hostel in 1428,2 the institution became, at an uncertain date in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Buckingham College (in tribute to its lay benefactor, Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham); then in 1542 it was refounded by Thomas, Lord Audley—who had ‘presided over the trials of Sir Thomas More and Anne Boleyn, and helped Henry VIII to get rid of two other wives, as well as Thomas Cromwell’—as the College of St Mary Magdalene, with the motto Garde ta foy (‘Keep faith’).