The 'College of the souls of all the faithful departed', commonly called All Souls College, was planned, built and endowed in the 1430s by Henry Chichele, long-serving Archbishop of Canterbury. It received its foundation charter in 1438 from King Henry VI, co-opted by the Archbishop as the College's co-founder. Chichele was in his seventies at the time, and this, his third Oxford benefaction, situated right at the University's heart, was the fruit of careful reflection about what was needed in a new college.
All Souls had two functions. The first, common to all colleges, was religious. The Warden and, originally, forty Fellows were to pray in chapel for the souls of the founders, of those who had fallen in the long wars with France (at the time not being prosecuted with much vigour), and of 'all the faithful departed'. The second function was academic, and in this, then as now, the College was distinctive.