Hertford college consists of an anomalous collection of buildings, of various styles and dates. The eye rests with most pleasure on the Jacobean part of the Quadrangle, opposite the gateway. One view gives the interior of the Quadrangle—in which is a sloping stairway reminiscent of a larger one of the same type in Blois Castle, the other shews the College from without, and includes the new buildings recently finished.
This medley of structures is suggestive of the vicissitude through which the College has passed.
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So far back as the thirteenth century it was in existence as Hart Hall; and here the students of Exeter and New College were successively lodged, while their own Colleges were building. Rightly or wrongly, Exeter College claimed the ownership of Hart Hall for four centuries; but in 1740 the then Principal of the Hall, Dr. Newton, was successful in asserting its independence, and Hart Hall became Hertford College. The endowments, however, were insignificant; the members fell off and the walls (or a part of them) fell down; and in 1820 a commission declared that Hertford College no longer existed.
About this time Magdalen Hall, which stood close to Magdalen College, was burned down, and the University allotted the buildings of Hertford to its roofless inhabitants; and the name of Hertford was changed to Magdalen Hall.
The final transformation came in 1874, when Hertford College, its title revived by Act of Parliament, was endowed by Mr. Baring, the banker. Thus, with finances very different to the slender endowments of Dr. Newton's time, the College began a new era of prosperity.
The famous Selden was at Hart Hall, and Charles James Fox at Hertford; the old Magdalen Hall bred William Tyndale, Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Clarendon, and Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan.
