Josiah Pullen (1631–1714)
Josiah (“Jo”) Pullen matriculated at the University of Oxford from Magdalen Hall on 15 November 1650, when he was about 19. He obtained his BA on 26 May 1654 and his MA on 9 April 1657. He was also incorporated at Cambridge in 1659.
Pullen was was Vice-President of Magdalen Hall (then still situated in the grounds of Magdalen College) for 57 years, from 1656 until his death.
In 1666 he was appointed one of the City Lecturers.
From 1675 he was also simultaneously Vicar of St Peter-in-the-East Church until his death, and also from 1684 Rector of Blundson St Andrew, Wiltshire.
Pullen was responsible in around 1700 for the building of the terraced footpath (left) that still exists on the north side of Headington Hill. It was paid for by a general subscription of the University: hence the joke that Pullen had “made a-way with public money”.
His other legacy to Headington was Jo Pullen’s tree. Pullen used to walk daily to the top of Headington Hill, and In about 1700 he planted an elm tree at the top at the turning point of his walk.
Although the tree itself no longer survives, the lane where it stood still bears his name.
Image of Josiah Pullen in
the National Portrait Gallery
Pullen died at the age of 81, and was buried at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 7 January 1714/15. The “Will of Josiah Pullen, Master of Arts of Saint Mary Magdalene, Oxfordshire” (date of probate 15 February 1715) was deposited at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (ref PROB 11/544); it was also proved in the Chancellor’s Court of the University of Oxford on 11 May 1715. He bequeathed the house and land in St Giles' parish which he held from St John's College and a small amount of land in Oving in Buckinghamshire to his nephew and executor John Pullen, who was Rector of Holwall in Somerset, towards the education of his son John Pullen, a Commoner of Magdalen Hall. He gave his brothers William and Jonathan Pullen twenty shillings each, and his nephew Thomas Lawrence ten pounds. He left forty shillings to the poor of St Peter-in-the-East parish.
There is this half-length portrait of Josiah Pullen at Hertford College.
(In 1820 Magdalen Hall took over the buildings of the abortive Hertford College, and it remained there until 1874, when it came to an end on the refounding of Hertford College.)
There is a
much fuller entry on Josiah Pullen in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
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