User:Deryck Chan/Magdalene rewrite

Buckingham College
Magdalene College was first founded in 1428 as Monk's Hostel, which hosted Benedictine student monks. The secluded location of the hostel was chosen because it was separated from the town centre by the River Cam. The main buildings of the college were first constructed in the 1470s under the leadership of John de Wisbech, then Abbot of Crowland. Under the patronage of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, the institution was renamed Buckingham College.

In the 16th century, the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. As a result of the subsequent Dissolution of the Monasteries, the parent abbey of Buckingham College, Crowland Abbey, was dissolved. However, the college remained in operation.

Refoundation
Walden Abbey, one of the Benedictine abbeys associated with Buckingham College, came into the possession of Thomas Audley after the Dissolution of the Monastries. In 1542, Audley refounded Buckingham College as the College of Saint Mary Magdalene. Derived from Audley were the arms of Magdalene, including the motto Garde Ta Foy (from Middle French for "keep your faith"), and the mystic Wyvern on the crest.

Thomas Audley died in 1544 aged 56, only two years after he re-founded the college. He donated to the college seven acres of property at Aldgate in London, which was his reward from Henry VIII for disposing of Anne Boleyn. This property would have brought enormous income had it been retained by the college. However, under the conspiracy of the Elizabethan banker Benedict Spinola, the property was permanently alienated to the Crown in 1574.

The transaction involved Spinola luring the master and fellows of the time to accept an increase in the annual rental from £9 to £15 a year in exchange for the property. The loss of the Aldgate property left the college in extreme poverty, and the street front of the college was only completed in the 1580s under the generosity of Christopher Wray, then Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench. The transaction was "almost certainly illegal", and was contested multiple times without success.