The benefactions highlighted here are only a selection of generous gifts that illustrate the breadth and vitality of giving to Wadham through the ages.  From friends to alumni, and from students to Wardens, many thousands of people who believe in the College and our future have chosen to support the College in a way which is meaningful to them and which helps us to fulfil our goals and objectives.   Since its wondrous foundation benefaction, the College’s viability as a leading academic institution has been virtually wholly dependent on the generosity of countless benefactors.  These have mainly been members or former members of the College, but others have been friends with no formal connection. The College is daily aware,  however,  that their gifts could not have achieved their stated aims without the support of literally countless others, many of whom are living today and whom the College regards amongst its dearest friends.

Four days before he died, Nicholas Wadham issued oral instructions to his wife, Dorothy, ‘to found, erect and establish a certain perpetual college of poor and needy scholars in the University of Oxford’. Together with Dorothy’s own contribution of £7,270, the Wadham’s total donation came to £26,470. Of this, £860 was spent on the site, £12,229 was spent on the building and the remainder went to form the original endowment.

Despite this generosity, the Wadhams’ contribution amounted to far more than this financial commitment. It was Dorothy’s energetic lobbying of politicians – and even King James 1 - in the face of opposition from at least two of Nicholas’ heirs that enabled the college to be built within four years of her husband’s death.

 1611 PHILIP BISSE

Wadham library was inaugurated with a bequest left by Philipp Bisse, Archdeacon of Taunton, who died in October 1613. The gift was of about 2,000 books, including ‘two of the same Books the one called the True Bible and the other a Greek testament’.

A former Fellow, John Goodridge left all his land in Walthamstow to ‘fund exhibitions and augment scholarship.’ His male heir was entrusted to ‘come every third year to Oxford to see whether the Testator’s Will is in all things performed or not’. Goodridge’s personal estate was used to buy land at Garsington, Oxford.

1706 DR HUMPHRY HODY, REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK

Dr Hody bequeathed to Wadham all his lands and leases in Merriott, Somerset and all his lands and tenements in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen in Oxford. This property was to be used for the election of ten Exhibitioners, six Greek and four Hebrew, which helped to establish the College’s reputation for Hebrew and Oriental Studies during the eighteenth century. Dr Hody is buried in the College Chapel.

 1775 RICHARD WARNER, (B.A., 1734)

In 1775 Warner donated 4,000 volumes to the Library collected around his twin interests of English literature and botany, including a Shakespeare first folio and a Hortus Siccus, or dried flower book of West Country specimens put together by William Paine. He also provided for an Exhibitioner for seven years provided that he ‘present to the Professor of Botany fifty specimens of plants yearly different from each other and from those of the previous years; and to produce a Hortus Siccus approved by the Professor of Botany’.

1788 JAMES GERARD, WARDEN

On his death in 1788, James Gerard, one time Warden (1770-83), bequeathed to the College £100 ‘to be applied to such uses for the real permanent benefit (not ornament) of the said College as the Warden and five senior Fellows of the said College shall in their conscience think to be fit and best’.

1806 DR JOHN WILLS, WARDEN AND VICE-CHANCELLOR

Dr Wills, Warden of Wadham between 1783-1806, who went on to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University between 1792-1796, gave £8,000 in government stock and the residue of his property for Exhibitions in Law and Medicine, a pension for ‘one superannuated Fellow’ and for the purchase of ecclesiastical benefices. Among other things, revenue from these investments was to be used to give annually to ‘some B.A. on the Foundation who shall in the judgement of the Warden be the best reader in Chapel books in Divinity to the value of £5 or £6’. All his books and furniture of his lodgings were left to the use of succeeding Wardens. Dr Wills is buried in the Chapel.

1935 SIR ALGERNON METHUEN, (GREATS, 1878)

Sir Algernon Methuen, publisher, who died in 1924, left £70,000 to the College to be paid on the death of his widow (1935) to fund scholarships. By careful investment, the sum has grown to £1.4 million and is a vital support to general academic funds which support students and Ffellows in their studies, teaching and research.

 1988 T.C. KEELEY, TUTOR IN PHYSICS, SENIOR TUTOR AND SUB-WARDEN

T. C. Keeley, who died on Christmas Day 1988 in the College rooms that had been his home for 64 of his 94 years, left some £500,000 – half his estate – to the College. Following his retirement in 1963, Keeley devoted himself tirelessly to the affairs of the Wadham Society.

  1990 DR SHOICHI OKINAGA

Dr Okinaga, President of Teikyo University, Japan, was introduced to the College by Sir Sydney Giffard.  His generous benefaction allowed the College to achieve its ambitious plans for the Bowra building.  He also supported Japanese students studying in Wadham as well as a distinguished series of Junior Research Fellowships in Japanese Studies.  In real terms, Dr Okinaga’s benefaction has been the largest since the foundation of the College.