The table of the society was plentifully spread in a stately refectory hung with paintings, and rich with fantastic carving.

The service of the Church was performed morning and evening in a chapel which had suffered much violence from the Reformers, and much from the Puritans, but which was, under every disadvantage, a building of eminent beauty, and which has, in our own time, been restored with rare taste and skill.

The spacious gardens along the river side were remarkable for the size of the trees, among which towered conspicuous one of the vegetable wonders of the island, a gigantic oak, older by a century, men said, than the oldest college in the University.
The statutes of the society ordained that the Kings of England and Princes of Wales should be lodged in Magdalene.

Edward the Fourth had inhabited the building while it was still unfinished.

Richard the Third had held his court there, had heard disputations in the hall, had feasted there royally, and had mended the cheer of his hosts by a present of fat bucks from his forests.