Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located in Pembroke Square. As of 2009, Pembroke had an estimated financial endowment of £44.9 million. In the early seventeenth century, the endowment of Thomas Tesdale—a merchant from nearby Abingdon—and Richard Wightwick—a clergyman from Berkshire—enabled the conversion of the Broadgates Hall, which had been a University hostel for law students since its construction in the fifteenth century, to form the basis of a fully fledged college. The letters patent to found the... college were signed by King James I in 1624, with the college being named after William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain and then-Chancellor of the University. Following its foundation, the college proceeded to expand around Broadgates, building what is now known as "Old Quad" in the 1600s. Built in stages through the seventeenth century out of the local Cotswold limestone, space restrictions saw the south-side of the Quad built directly on top of the old City Wall.
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