Chapter XXI: Keble College 461 (4)

The object of the early founders of Colleges was to pass as many men as possible through a course of training that would fit them for the service of Church or State: and so Stapeldon fixed fourteen years as the outside period of holding his scholarships; he had no idea of giving fellowships for life. The twelve scholars were to study Philosophy; and a thirteenth scholar was to be a priest studying Scripture or Canon Law. Aptness to learn, good character, and poverty were the qualifications required of them; and they were to be chosen without regard to favour, fear, relationship, or love. They were kept in order by punishments, increasing from a stoppage of commons to expulsion, at the discretion of the Rector, who was chosen annually after the audit in October. The Rector also looked after the money, and rooms, and servants; but, if two Fellows demanded the expulsion of a servant he was to appoint another. The Rector must have been always under thirty; it was the younger Masters of Arts that then directed education in the University. Disputations were held twice a week, and of three disputations, two were in Logic, one in Natural Science. Tenpence a week was allowed for commons, and each scholar received in addition the sum of ten shillings a year, the Rector and the Priest twenty shillings each. If any scholar was away for more than four weeks his commons were stopped; and by an absence of five months he forfeited his scholarship.

Stapeldon endowed his Hall with the great tithes of Gwinear in Cornwall, and of Long Wittenham in Berks; and any surplus or legacy was to go to public purposes, such as increasing the number of scholars or buying books. There was a common chest with three keys, kept by the Rector, the senior Scholar, and the Priest; and the audit-rolls (_computi_) are extant from 1324, though with gaps, as for instance during the Black Death (1349). There is something touching in the number of legacies which Stapeldon left to individual poor scholars in his will.

The scholars were very poor; and to relieve them, Ralph Germeyn (Precentor of Exeter), Richard Greenfield (Rector of Kilkhampton in Cornwall), and Robert Rygge (Fellow 1362-1372; afterwards Canon and Chancellor of Exeter), at several times founded “chests” for making loans to them without interest, on security of books or plate; but all such funds have now disappeared, having been, it seems, absorbed in Charles I’s war-chest. The College itself sometimes borrowed; in 1358 the College accounts show a payment of “£3 for a Bible redeemed from Chichester chest”; in 1374, of “four marks to our barber for a Bible pledged to him in the time of Dagenet” (John Dagenet had been Rector in 1371-1372).

The life was simple. Besides the “commons” (_i. e._ allowances for food), “liveries” (_i. e._ clothes) were supplied about once in three years. The scholars were to wear black boots (_caligæ_); and conform to clerical manners according to their standing as Sophists, Bachelors, or Masters. Meals were taken in the hall (which stood a little north of the present hall), where there was always a large bason with hanging towels. A charcoal fire burned in the middle of the hall, under an opening to let out the smoke; but men were not allowed to linger round the fire, and they went off to bed early because candles were dear, nearly 2_d._ a pound, _i. e._ 2_s._ of our money--they lacked therefore the genial inspiration of writing by good candle-light. All had to be in College by nine o’clock in the evening; and the key of the gate was kept in the Rector’s room, which was over the gate. Lectures began at six or seven in the morning; dinner was at ten; supper at five. Of the servants, the manciple received five shillings a term, the cook two, barber twelvepence, washerwoman fifteen pence. The barber was the newsmonger of that as of other ages.

The scholars might by common consent make any new statutes, not contrary to the Founder’s ordinances; and were to refer all doubts to the Visitor.

The Bishops of Exeter were kind Visitors; and gave books and money several times. Gradually more halls and lodging-houses were obtained, some lying on the lane[124] which ran all along inside the city wall, others along St. Mildred’s (now Brasenose) lane, and others along the Turl. A tower was built on the site of St. Stephen’s Hall, with a gate opening into the lane under the city wall; two windows of this tower survive in the staircase of the present Rector’s house. The present garden is on the site of some of the old buildings, but the ivy-clad buttresses of the Bodleian and the great fig-trees along the College buildings, which make such a show in summer, of course do not date from such early times.

An agreement had to be made with the Rector of St. Mildred’s parish, who feared lest the College-chapel should interfere with his rights. This early chapel had rooms under it, and a porch. The _computus_ for building a library in 1383, shows that the building cost £57 13_s._ 5½_d._, the leaded roof costing £13 13_s._ 4_d._; and it was completed between Easter and Michaelmas, before the beginning of the Academic year. The timber came from Aldermaston in Berks, the stone from Taynton in Gloucestershire and Whatley near Frome--the latter corresponding to our present Bath stone. Carpenters and masons were paid 6_d._ a day, and the masons had breakfast and dinner (_merenda_ and _prandium_). David, the foreman, had 6_d._ a week for “commons,” and he held the place of a modern architect.

The regard paid to poverty brought forward some distinguished men, such as Walter Lihert (Fellow 1420-1425), Bishop of Norwich, a miller’s son from Lanteglos by Fowey in Cornwall. This consideration for poor scholars did not often fail. Long afterwards John Prideaux (Fellow 1601, Rector 1612-1642) used to say, “If I could have been parish clerk of Ubber (Ugborough in Devon), I should never have been Bishop of Worcester.” Benjamin Kennicott was master of a charity school at Totnes till friends helped him to come to Oxford, where (in 1747) he obtained a Fellowship in Exeter College, and became a great Hebrew scholar. William Gifford, the critic, was apprentice to a shoemaker at Ashburton, where a surgeon helped him to gain a Bible clerkship at Exeter (1779); when he became a leader in the literary world, he remembered his own rise in life, and founded an Exhibition at Exeter for poor boys from Ashburton school. Thus the Universities had formerly something of the character of popular bodies in which learning and study were recommendations, and the avenues of promotion were not closed even to the poorest.

The Wiclifite movement largely influenced Exeter College, and a number of the Fellows suffered in the cause. But, mixed with this, was a wish to uphold the independence of the University, as against the Archbishop of Canterbury’s power of visitation; and perhaps a feeling for the _lay_ government, as against the clergy. A former Fellow, Robert Tresilian, was among Richard II’s chief supporters; and his fate is the first legend in _The Mirror for Magistrates_, written by William Baldwin in 1559. Later on several Fellows were connected with the House of Lancaster. Michael de Tregury (Fellow 1422-1427) was in 1431 made Rector of the new University, set up at Caen by the English during their rule in France. The physicians of Henry VI. and Margaret were both Fellows. But when Margaret was at Coventry in 1459, levying an army for the War of the Roses, she took “Queen’s gold” from the College, _i. e._ a tenth of an old fine paid the King for ratifying the grant of a house.

The College was favourably known in the Revival of Learning. William Grocyn taught Greek in the hall; and Richard Croke and Cornelius Vitelli lodged in rooms in the College. Some of the Fellows too were connected with Wolsey; but the College on the whole sided with the opposition to Henry VIII’s measures, like their friends in the West. John Moreman (Fellow 1510-1522) opposed Catherine’s divorce, and was imprisoned under Edward VI. The Cornish insurgents in 1549 demanded that “Dr. Moreman and Dr. Crispin should be safely sent to them.” Moreman was also famous as a schoolmaster; and as Vicar of the College living of Menheniot, he taught the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Commandments in English, the people having hitherto used only the old Cornish tongue.

The _Valor Ecclesiasticus_ of 1535 states the College revenues at only £83 2_s._ But Sir William Petre, a statesman trained under Thomas Cromwell, wishing to benefit his old College, gave it some lands and advowsons which he bought of Queen Elizabeth, and added eight Fellowships for the counties in which his family held or should hold land. Elizabeth’s Charter of Incorporation is dated 22nd March, 1566.

New Statutes were then framed by Petre and the Visitor. The Rectorship had already been made perpetual. Petre allowed the Fellows to retire to the Vicarage of Kidlington in time of plague, an oft-recurring trouble. Under a later ordinance a Fellow was allowed, with Lord Petre’s approval, to travel abroad for four years to study Medicine or Civil Law.

Petre also gave the College a curious Latin Psalm-book, which had been the family Bible of the Tudors, the most learned royal family in Europe. It is from it that we know the birthday of Henry VII., 28th Jan. 1457.

Exeter was still in sympathy with the old faith. Ralph Sherwine (Fellow 1568-1575) was hanged by the side of Edmund Campian of St. John’s, in 1581; and several Fellows fled abroad, such as Richard Bristowe, the chief of the translators who put forth the Douai Bible. Elizabeth remedied this by getting two loyal men appointed Rectors successively, Thomas Glasier in 1578, and Thomas Holland in 1592--the latter was one of the translators of the Authorised Version. Under them Exeter became remarkable for discipline and learning, tinged by Puritan views.

John Prideaux was an equally well-known Rector under Charles I., and came into conflict with Laud. There was more intercourse then between English and foreign Protestant Universities than there is now; and Sixtinus Amama, the Dutch Hebraist, speaks in the most grateful terms of the kindness he received from Prideaux and the Fellows. Exeter was now training men like Sir John Eliot, William Strode, William Noye, and John Maynard. Maynard afterwards gave his old College money to found a Catechetical and a Hebrew lectureship. In 1612 the members included 134 commoners, 37 poor scholars, and 12 servitors--the number of the whole University was 2920. Western friends, the Aclands, Peryams, and others, now built a new hall; and John Peryam also built the rooms between the hall and the library, while George Hakewill, a Fellow, gave money to build a new chapel in 1623.

As to the life of the place, Shaftesbury, the famous statesman, who was a member of the College in 1637, gives an amusing account of “coursing” (now become a sort of free fight) in the schools; of how he stopped the evil custom of “tucking” freshmen (_i. e._ grating off the skin from the lip to the chin); and how he prevented the Fellows “altering the size of” (_i. e._ weakening) “the College beer.” Shaftesbury’s future colleague in the Cabal, Clifford, was also at Exeter.

Charles I., in 1636, gave an endowment out of confiscated lands to found Fellowships for the Channel Islands at Exeter, Jesus, and Pembroke, that men so trained might devote themselves to work in the Islands. He made John Prideaux (Rector 1612-1642) and Thomas Winniff (Fellow 1595-1609), Bishops, the former of Worcester, the latter of Lincoln, when he at last tried to conciliate the gentry, who were almost all opposed to Laud’s innovations.

In the Civil War most of the Fellows took the King’s side, and Archbishop Usher sojourned in some wooden buildings then known as Prideaux Buildings, situated behind the old Rector’s house, buildings now partly re-erected in the Turl. The College plate was taken by Charles, although the Fellows had redeemed it by a gift of money; but the King’s needs were overwhelming.

Under the Commonwealth John Conant became Rector, and increased the fame of the College for learning and discipline. “Once[125] a week he had a catechetical lecture in the Chapel, in which he went over Piscator’s _Aphorisms_ and Woollebius’ _Compendium Theologiæ Christianæ_; and by the way fairly propounded the principal objections made by the Papists, Socinians, and others against the orthodox doctrine, in terms suited to the understanding and capacity of the younger scholars. He took care likewise that the inferior servants of the College should be instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, and would sometimes catechise them in his own lodgings. He looked strictly himself to the keeping up all exercises, and would often slip into the hall in the midst of their lectures and disputations. He would always oblige both opponents and respondents to come well prepared, and to perform their respective parts agreeably to the strict law of disputation. Here he would often interpose, either adding new force to the arguments of an opponent, or more fullness to the answers of the respondent, and supplying where anything seemed defective, or clearing where anything was obscure in what the moderator[126] subjoined. He would often go into the chambers and studies of the young scholars, observe what books they were reading, and reprove them if he found them turning over any modern author, and send them to Tully, that great master of Roman eloquence, to learn the true and genuine propriety of that language. His care in the election of Fellows was very singular. A true love of learning, and a good share of it in a person of untainted morals and low circumstances, were sure of his patronage and encouragement. He would constantly look over the observator’s roll and buttery-book himself, and whoever had been absent from chapel prayers or extravagant in his expenses, or otherwise faulty, was sure he must atone for his fault by some such exercise as the Rector should think fit to set him, for he was no friend to pecuniary mulcts, which too often punish the father instead of the son. The students were many more than could be lodged within the walls: they crowded in here from all parts of the nation, and some from beyond the sea. He opposed Cromwell’s plan of giving the College at Durham the privileges of a University, setting forth the advantages of large Universities and the dangers which threaten religion and learning by multiplying small and petty Academies. He was instrumental in moving Mr. Selden’s executors to bestow his prodigious collection of books, more than 8000 volumes, on the University. In his declining age he could scarce be prevailed upon by his physicians to drink now and then a little wine. He slept very little, having been an assiduous and indefatigable student for about threescore years together. Whilst his strength would bear it, he often sat up in his study till late at night, and thither he returned very early in the morning.”

The Restoration put an end alike to learning and to discipline, to the grief of a few good men, such as Ken, though the Royalists in general issued numerous squibs and satires against the Puritans, which still impose on some writers. Anthony Wood, a strong Royalist and constant resident in Oxford, makes frequent allusion in his diaries to the disastrous effects of the Restoration. “Some cavaliers that were restored,” he says in one place, “were good scholars, but the generality were dunces.” “Before the war,” he says in another place, “we had scholars that made a thorough search in scholastic and polemical divinity, in humane learning, and natural philosophy: but now scholars study these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the University. Their aim is not to live as students ought to do, viz. temperate, abstemious, and plain and grave in their apparel; but to live like gentry, to keep dogs and horses, to turn their studies into places to keep bottles, to swagger in gay apparell and long periwigs.” The difference between a Puritan and a Restoration Head of a House is strongly set out by the contrast between Conant’s government of Exeter and that of Joseph Maynard, who was elected on Conant’s ejection for refusing submission to the Act of Conformity (1662). Wood says--“Exeter College is now (1665) much debauched by a drunken governor; whereas before in Dr. Conant’s time it was accounted a civil house, it is now rude and uncivil. The Rector (Maynard) is good-natured, generous, and a good scholar; but he has forgot the way of a College life, and the decorum of a scholar. He is given much to bibbing; and when there is a music-meeting in one of the Fellows’ chambers, he will sit there, smoke, and drink till he is drunk, and has to be led to his lodgings by the junior Fellows.”

In 1666 pressure was put upon Maynard to resign, and he did so on advice of the Visitor and his brother, Sir John Maynard. The resignation was made smooth for him by the understanding that he should be appointed Prebendary of Exeter in room of Dr. Arthur Bury, who was now elected Rector of Exeter. Dr. Bury wrote a book, famous in the Deist controversy, called _The Naked Gospel_, which had the distinction of being impeached by several Masters of Arts, and formally condemned and burnt by order of the Convocation of the University. About the time of its publication, Bury got into trouble with Trelawney the Visitor, the same whose name became a watchword in the West (“and shall Trelawney die”), over questions of discipline and jurisdiction. The Visitor expelled Bury and his supporters, July 1690; the decision was appealed against in the Court of King’s Bench, and in the House of Lords, but was finally upheld.

The evil effects of the Restoration in studies and in morals continued. Later on, Dean Prideaux can still say, “There is nothing but drinking and duncery. Exeter is totally spoiled, and so is Christ Church. There is over against Baliol, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but dragooners and tinkers. Here the Baliol men, by perpetual bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots.”

Exeter and Christ Church were both reformed by John Conybeare,[127] a writer famous for his answer to the _Christianity as old as the Creation_ of Matthew Tindal, also an Exeter man.

Jacobite feeling was strong in Oxford, and at the election of county members in 1755, when the Jacobites guarded the hustings in Broad Street, twenty men deep, the Whigs passed through Exeter and succeeded in voting. The Vice-Chancellor, a strong Jacobite, remarked on “the infamous behaviour of one College”; and this led to a war of pamphlets. Christ Church, Exeter, Merton, and Wadham were the four Whig Colleges.

Early in the eighteenth century the front gate and tower and the buildings between this and the Hall were erected by the help of such friends as Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, formerly a Fellow. But in 1709 the library was burnt. The fire began “in the scrape-trencher’s room. This adjoining to the library, all the inner part of the library was destroyed, and only one stall of books or thereabouts secured.” The wind was west, and the smoke must have reached the nostrils of Hearne as he lay abed at St. Edmund Hall, for “he was strangely disturbed with apprehensions of fire.” The library was rebuilt in 1778, and had many gifts of books and manuscripts, and a fund for buying more was established by Dr. Hugh Shortridge.

When the time of religious revival came, John Wesley influenced some members of the College, such as Thomas Broughton (Fellow 1733-1741). During the present century other Fellows were noted in the Evangelical movement; and in the Tractarian movement the names of William Sewell, John Brande Morris, and John Dobree Dalgairns (better known as Father Dalgairns), were conspicuous.

Nor did the College lack among the fellows and scholars names in Science, such as Milman and Rigaud; or in Oriental Learning, as Kennicott and Weston; or in Classics and Literature, as Stackhouse and Upton; or in Law, as Judge Coleridge; or in Theology, as Forshall the editor of Wiclif’s Bible, and Milman, Bishop of Calcutta, and Jacobson, Bishop of Chester; while among its other members it counted Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Sir Charles Lyell. Of the living men who uphold the repute of the College, this is not the place to speak.

In 1854 the Commissioners threw the Fellowships open, and turned eight of them into scholarships, ten open, ten for the diocese of Exeter, and two for the Channel Islands. In the same year new buildings were begun facing Broad Street, and next year a library, and the year after a chapel and a rectory. Since the chapel absorbed the site of the former rector’s house (east of the old chapel), the new house was built on the site of St. Helen’s quadrangle. The liberality of the members was conspicuous on the occasion of these buildings. Stained-glass and carved oak stalls have been since given to the chapel, and some fine tapestry, representing the Visit of the Magi, executed by Burne Jones and William Morris, old members of the College.

Many changes have been made in old arrangements, but the foundation of the new scholarships carried out the real spirit of the Founder’s views, in passing men rapidly through a University training. It is hoped that Walter de Stapeldon would, if now living, approve of the care for educating scholars which he had so much at heart.

V.

ORIEL COLLEGE.

BY C. L. SHADWELL, M.A., FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE.

Adam de Brome, the actual, though not the titular, founder of Oriel College, was at the beginning of the fourteenth century a well-endowed ecclesiastic, in the service of King Edward the Second. He held the living of Hanworth, Middlesex; he was Chancellor of Durham and Archdeacon of Stow; he held the office of almoner to the King; and in 1320 he was presented by the King to the Rectory of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford.

The College of Walter de Merton had then been in existence nearly half a century; and the type which he had created, a self-governing, independent society of secular students, well lodged and well endowed, was that to which the aims of the struggling foundations of William of Durham, Devorguilla of Balliol, and Bishop Stapeldon were directed. The poor masters established out of William of Durham’s fund, and now beginning to be known as the scholars of University Hall, were still subject to Statutes issued by the University, and had not yet attained to an independent position. It was not till 1340 that the scholars of the Lady Devorguilla were set free from the authority of extraneous Procuratores, and allowed to be governed by a Master of their own choosing. The office of Rector of Stapeldon Hall was an annual one; he was appointed by the scholars from among themselves, or if they disagreed, by the Chancellor of the University, and his principal duties were bursarial. But for the standard set by the completely organised House of Merton, the development of these infant societies might have taken a very different direction.

Adam de Brome appears to have chosen Merton as his model, and his foundation was from the first intended to be styled a College, a title perhaps till then exclusively enjoyed by Merton.[128]

By Letters Patent, dated at Langley, 20th April, 1324, he obtained the royal license to purchase a messuage in Oxford or its suburbs, and therein to establish “quoddam collegium scolarium in diversis scientiis studentium,” to be styled the College of St. Mary in Oxford, with power to acquire lands to the annual value of thirty pounds. In the course of the same year he purchased the advowson of the church of Aberford, in Yorkshire; and, in Oxford, Perilous Hall, in St. Mary Magdalen parish, and Tackley’s Inn in the High Street; and by his charter dated 6th December at Oxford, and confirmed by the King, 20th December, 1324, at Nottingham, he founded his College of scholars “in sacra theologia & arte dialectica studentium,” appointing John de Laughton as their Rector, and assigning to them Tackley’s Inn as their residence. This Society, if it ever came into actual existence at all, lasted only a little more than a twelvemonth; and on the first of January, 1325-6, its possessions were surrendered by Adam de Brome into the King’s hands, as a preliminary to its re-establishment under the King’s name. Edward the Second had already shown an interest in the maintenance of academical students at the sister University; and the scholars whom he supported there were the germ of the institution afterwards developed by his son under the name of King’s Hall. He also founded the Cistercian house at Oxford. He lent himself readily to the suggestion of his Almoner; and by his Letters Patent, dated at Norwich, 21st January, 1325-6, he refounded the College, with Adam de Brome as its head with the title of Provost, restoring the old endowments, further augmented by the grant of the advowson of St. Mary’s. Leave was given to appropriate the church to the use of the College on condition of maintaining four chaplains for the performance of daily service. License was given to take and hold lands in mortmain to the annual value of sixty pounds. The original statutes are dated on the same day as the charter of foundation. By these statutes, nearly all the provisions of which are taken verbatim from the Merton statutes of 1274, the College was to consist of a Provost, and ten scholars to be nominated in the first instance by Adam de Brome, and thereafter to be elected by the whole body. The ten first nominated were to study Theology; those elected in future were to study Arts and Philosophy, until they were allowed to pass to the study of Theology or (to the number of five or six out of ten) of Civil or Canon Law. The Provost was to be chosen by the whole body of scholars from among themselves and presented to the King’s Chancellor for admission. The second officer of the College was the Dean, corresponding to the Sub-Warden at Merton, filling the Provost’s place in his absence, and acting with him at all times in the College government. Provision was made, similar to that at Merton, for the appointment of other subordinate Deans, such as were established elsewhere and in later foundations; this power has however never been exercised, and the Dean of Oriel, alone of all who bear that title, is in power and dignity second only to the head of the College. The scholars were to be chosen from among Bachelors of Arts, without preference for any locality, place of birth, or kindred. Three chapters were to be held in the year, at the same times as those appointed at Merton, Christmas, Easter, and St. Margaret’s day, at which inquiry was to be made into the conduct of the members, and newly elected scholars were to be admitted.

The foundation was now in contemplation of law, complete. The new Society was a corporate body, having a license to hold land, and with a common seal.[129] It probably was at first established either in St. Mary’s Hall, the Manse or Rectory House of St. Mary’s Church, or in Tackley’s Inn, a large messuage in the High Street, on the site now occupied by the house No. 106.

But the College had not long been founded before Adam de Brome perceived that the protection afforded by the King’s name would be insufficient, unless he could also obtain the support of the Bishop of Lincoln, Henry de Burghash. The Bishop’s approbation of the foundation was not given until a new body of statutes had been drafted, differing in many important particulars from the Foundation Statutes, and placing the College under the control not of the Crown but of the Bishop. The Provost when elected is to be presented to the Bishop for approval or confirmation. Only three of the Fellows may be allowed to study Civil or Canon Law, all the rest being required to betake themselves to Theology. The Bishop is everywhere substituted for the King or his Chancellor; his approval is required for alterations in the statutes; the power of interpreting them on the occasion of any dispute is vested in him; and he is constituted the sole and final judge in the removal of a Provost or scholar for misconduct. Prayers are to be said for the Bishop’s father and mother, Robert Lord Burghash and Matilda his wife, his brothers Robert and Stephen, as well as for the King and Adam de Brome; the name of Hugh le Despenser is significantly omitted. These statutes were issued by the College 23rd May, and confirmed by the Bishop 11th June, 1326; the Bishop’s charter approving the foundation was first given on 13th March, but apparently was kept back until the constitution of the College had been settled to his satisfaction, and was only finally granted on 19th May. In the course of the same year the appropriation of the church of St. Mary was approved by the Bishop and the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln; and on Adam de Brome’s resignation, the College was duly inducted by the Prior of St. Frideswide (August 10).

By the close of the year the Queen’s party, to which Bishop Burghash belonged, had triumphed over the Despensers, the deposition of the King following in January 1327. The Bishop made use of the favour in which he stood with the new government to obtain some substantial benefits for the College which he had taken under his protection. The advowson of Coleby, Lincolnshire, purchased by Adam de Brome, was secured to the College by a Royal grant, with a view to its ultimate appropriation. The Hospital of St. Bartholomew, near Oxford, and of Royal foundation, was annexed to the College. The maintenance of the almsmen was provided by a charge on the fee farm rent of the city; but the possessions of the Hospital, consisting principally of tenements and rents in Oxford, went to augment the slender endowments of the College.[130] But the most important accession which the institution now received was by the grant of a messuage, called “La Oriole,” the nucleus of the site of the present College buildings. This messuage stood in St. John Baptist’s parish, fronting Schidyard Street and St. John Street, and occupying nearly the whole of the southern half of the present quadrangle; the south-east corner, the site of the present chapel, was not acquired till later. It had anciently been known as Senescal Hall, but had since acquired the name of La Oriole. Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward the First, had granted it to her chaplain and kinsman James of Spain, and the reversion was now (Dec. 1327) conferred upon the College. The life interest was surrendered in 1329, and the Society probably removed there in that year.[131]

The increase in the College revenues since its first establishment was probably the occasion of issuing some further supplementary statutes, 8th December, 1329. The commons or weekly allowance was raised from twelve to fifteen pence a week for each scholar. The stipend of the Provost was increased to ten marks. Ten shillings were allowed to the Dean; five shillings apiece to the two Fellows, “collectores reddituum,” who collected the income derived from the oblations in St. Mary’s Church, and the rents of house and other property in Oxford; five shillings to the collector of the Littlemore tithes; pittances were allowed to the Fellows at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. The Provost was allowed to keep a separate table, and to maintain a private servant. By a more important provision, ex-Fellows were made eligible to the office of Provost. These statutes were confirmed by the Visitor 26th Feb. 1330, and with those of May 1326, by Royal Letters Patent, 18th March, 1330.

The first chapter in the history of the College, recording the birth and establishment of Adam de Brome’s foundation, closes with the Papal Bulls ratifying and confirming the acts of the King and the Bishop, and authorising the appropriation of the three benefices of St. Mary’s, Aberford, and Coleby. These were obtained in answer to a letter of the King, dated 4th December, 1330, in which the design of the foundation is becomingly set forth. In a postscript to this letter the King calls the Pope’s attention to another matter, the inconvenience arising from the frequent occurrence of disturbances in St. Mary’s Church and Churchyard, arising from the gatherings that habitually took place there, and which led to “effusiones sanguinis” within the consecrated precincts, calling for the Bishop’s sentence of reconciliation. This was not always easily to be obtained, the Bishop being engaged elsewhere in his extensive diocese; and the King suggests that the Pope should authorise the Bishop to give a standing commission to the Abbots of Oseney and Rewley to act for him whenever occasion should require, and effect the necessary reconciliation. The Pope, having taken six months to consider this application, issued on the 23rd June, 1331, four separate Bulls, three of which provided for the appropriation to the College of the three churches, and the fourth dealt with the matter last referred to, the use of St. Mary’s Church for secular assemblies, but very differently from the King’s expectations. Instead of acceding to the proposal that a simple and expeditious machinery should be provided for the reconciliation of the Church, on the not unusual occurrence of a riot within its walls, he proceeded to forbid, under penalty of excommunication, the holding of any meetings whatever, “mercationes aliquas emendo vel vendendo seu conventiculas illicitas,” in the church or churchyard. The Bulls authorising the appropriations asked for were promptly put into execution, and the benefices secured to the College, though Aberford did not fall vacant till 1341, and Coleby not till 1346. But the fourth Bull was suffered to lie unemployed in the College custody, until an opportunity[132] arose in which it was thought likely to prove serviceable.

Adam de Brome died 16th June, 1332, on which day his obit. was long observed by the College. By his will, proved in the Mayor of Oxford’s Court, certain houses in Oxford--Moses Hall in Penyferthyng Street, and Bauer Hall in St. Mary Magdalen parish--which he had acquired for the further endowment of his College, were devised to Richard Overton, clerk, his executor. Overton may have been one of the Fellows; at all events he was intimately associated with Adam de Brome in the establishment of the College and in the acquisition of its endowments; and the property now left to him, and other property afterwards acquired, were all ultimately secured to Oriel.

Adam de Brome was succeeded in the Provostship by William de Leverton, Fellow and Master of Arts, unanimously elected by the College, and instituted by the Bishop, 27th June. Leverton died 21st Nov. 1348, and William de Hawkesworth, Doctor in Theology, was elected in his place. The Bishop annulled this election on the ground of informality, and himself appointed Hawkesworth to be Provost by his own authority.[133] Hawkesworth’s tenure of the Provostship was short, and it is chiefly memorable for the part he played in the disputed election to the Chancellorship of the University, which occurred early in 1349. Hawkesworth, who had already acted as the Chancellor’s Commissary, was the candidate of the Northerners, the party with which the College appears throughout to be connected; John Wylliot, Fellow of Merton, was the candidate of the Southerners. On the 19th of March 1349, Hawkesworth, as Chancellor, with his Proctors proceeded to St. Mary’s for the performance of Divine service, and they were there attacked by Wylliot and his party. It was then that Hawkesworth had recourse to the neglected Bull of Pope John XXII., which had hitherto lain unused in the College Treasury. It was now produced and publicly read in the Church, with what immediate result does not appear, though Wylliot’s action was complained of to the King, and a Commission sent to inquire into the matter. Hawkesworth’s death followed soon after, April 8th; he was buried in St. Mary’s, where an inscription still remains to his memory. Before the election of his successor, an order was received from the Bishop, prescribing the procedure to be followed, probably with the object of preventing the irregularities which had vitiated the last election. William de Daventre, who was now chosen, had been an active member of the College for some years; his name occurs frequently in deeds relating to the Oxford property. In 1361 the College found itself rich enough to obtain the King’s license to add to its possessions divers messuages and small pieces of ground in Oxford, which had been accumulating since the foundation, and which were, up to this time, held in the name of members of the society in trust. The earliest roll of College property, the rental for the year 1363-4, was drawn up shortly after the license had been obtained and acted upon; and as a consequence of this increase in their corporate revenues, a new ordinance or statute was issued in 1364, augmenting the weekly commons, and assigning additional stipends to the Provost, and to certain College servants.

Daventre died in June 1373, and was succeeded by John de Colyntre, then one of the Fellows, and for some years past one of its leading members. The entry of his election in the Lincoln Register records the names of the electing Fellows, eight besides Colyntre himself, and describes him in eulogistic language, “virum in spiritualibus et temporalibus plurimum circumspectum literarum sciencia vita et moribus merito commendandum scientem et valentem jura domus nostrae efficaciter prosequi et tueri quin immo propter vite sue munditiam et excellentiam virtutum apud omnes admodum gratiosum.” It was long before the Fellows were again as completely in harmony upon the choice of their head. Colyntre’s rule lasted till his death in 1385 or 1386.

All through the latter part of the fourteenth century the College was engaged in increasing its scanty endowment, by the purchase, as opportunity offered, of houses, quit-rents, and other property in Oxford, contiguous to or in the neighbourhood of La Oriole. The chantry of St. Mary in the church of St. Michael Southgate, founded by Thomas de la Legh, was annexed to the College in 1357; as was also the chantry of St. Thomas in the church of St. Mary the Virgin in 1392. Other acquisitions were secured by successive licenses in mortmain, granted in 1376, in 1392, and in 1394. In this way the greater part of the ground lying between La Oriole and St. Mary’s Hall was acquired and appropriated to the enlargement of the College buildings and garden.

The name of St. Mary’s College, the legal description of the College, seems to have been little used: the Society is sometimes described as the King’s Hall, or the King’s College, but it was more generally known by the old name of the mansion in which it was lodged. The first instance of the use of the name “Oriel” by the College itself in a formal document is in 1367; but it was no doubt a popular designation at a much earlier date.

In 1373 license was granted by the Bishop for the celebration of masses and other divine offices in a chapel constructed, or to be constructed, within the College. Previous to this the church of St. Mary had been resorted to for all purposes. The legends on the painted glass windows in this chapel, preserved by Wood, record its erection by Richard Earl of Arundel, and by his son Thomas Arundel, about the year 1379.

Next in importance for the society of students which Adam de Brome had founded, after providing them with a house to lodge in, a church or chapel to worship in, and means to maintain them, was books for them to study; and this he had, as he believed, secured in the infancy of the foundation, by acquiring the library which Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, had brought together, and which he had placed in the new building he had erected adjoining St. Mary’s Church. The building and the books placed in it were intended by the Bishop to be made over to the University for the use of all its students; but his intention was frustrated by his premature death; and his executors, finding his estate unequal to the payment of his debts and funeral expenses, were driven to pawn the books for the sum of fifty pounds. Adam de Brome, who, as Rector of the church, had allowed the building to be erected on his ground, pressed for the completion of the Bishop’s undertaking; and the executors, unable otherwise to help him, told him to go in God’s name, and redeem the books and hold them for the use of his College. Acting upon this permission, he redeemed the books, brought them to Oxford, and gave them, with the building which had been built for their reception, to his newly founded Society. This account of the transaction was not acquiesced in by the University; and in the Long Vacation of 1337, five years after Adam de Brome’s death, the Chancellor’s Commissary, at the head of a body of students, made forcible entry into the building, and carried off the books, the few Fellows who were then in residence not daring, as the College plaintively records, to offer any resistance. Thirty years later, proceedings were taken in the Chancellor’s Court to recover possession of the building itself; and notwithstanding an urgent petition of the College imploring the Bishop of Lincoln to interfere on its behalf, the University took possession, and established, in the upper story of what is still known as the Old Congregation House, the nucleus of its first library. The College continued for a long time to assert its claim; and it was not till 1410 that the dispute was finally set at rest. But although disappointed in this quarter, other donors and benefactors rapidly came forward to compensate the College for its loss. Adam de Brome probably gave largely. Master Thomas Cobildik appears in the earliest catalogue as the donor of a considerable part of the then recorded collection. William Rede, Bishop of Chichester, who died in 1385, left ten books to Oriel, and made a similar bequest to most of the then existing Colleges. Provost Daventre, who died in 1373, left the residue of his books to the College. Two Fellows, Elias de Trykyngham and John de Ingolnieles, whose names occur together in a deed of 1356, gave books which are still in the College library. In 1375 a catalogue was compiled, which is still preserved;[134] this comprises about one hundred volumes, arranged according to the divisions of academical study, the Arts, the Philosophies, and lastly, the higher departments of Law--Civil and Canon--and Theology.

The Society for whose use it was intended was still a small one; the number of Fellows remained, as Adam de Brome had left it, at no more than ten. The average tenure of a Fellowship was about ten years. The requirement to proceed to the higher faculties produced little result; either it was disregarded, or the Fellowship was vacated from other causes before the time came for obeying it. By the statutes a vacancy was caused by entering religion, obtaining a valuable benefice, or ceasing to reside and study in the College. Marriage must always have been reckoned as a variety of the last disqualification; and it is especially enumerated in a deed of 1395 reciting the various causes which might bring about the avoidance of a Fellowship.

The Provost, on the other hand, generally held his office till his death. This is the case during the whole of the first century of the College (1326-1425).

Besides the members of the corporate society, room appears to have been found in the Oriole for a few other members, graduates, scholars, bible-clerks, commensales. Thomas Fitzalan, or Arundel, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, is the most eminent name recorded in the fourteenth century.

It is perhaps worth while here to dispose of the claim of the College to be connected with the authorship of _Piers Ploughman_. The real name of the author of this remarkable poem was, no doubt, William Langlande; but a misunderstanding of a passage in the opening introduction led Stowe hastily to infer that it was written by one John Malverne; and a name something like this, John Malleson, or Malvesonere, occurring as that of one of the Fellows of Oriel in deeds of the year 1387 and subsequently, was sufficient ground for identification. It is enough now to say that the poem was not written by any John Malverne, and that no person of that name was ever Fellow of Oriel; that the only Fellow with a name at all resembling it first appears some time after the date of the poem (_c._ 1362); and that the internal evidence makes it highly improbable that the writer was ever at any University. There has been, however, this indirect advantage to the College, that, on the ground of its supposed connexion, a valuable MS. of the poem was presented to its library in the seventeenth century, which ranks among the best authorities for the text.

On the death of Provost Colyntre in 1386 began the first of a long series of disputes concerning the election of a head. The Fellows were divided in their choice between Dr. John Middleton, Fellow and Canon of Hereford, and Master Thomas Kirkton. Middleton had the support of five, Kirkton of four of the Fellows. An attempt was made, though whether before or after the election does not clearly appear, to deprive Master Ralph Redruth, B.D., of his Fellowship, though on appeal to the King he succeeded in retaining his place. Kirkton presented himself to the Bishop of Lincoln, and was confirmed. From the Bishop appeal was made to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the King. On the 18th of April, 1386, Letters Patent were issued, ordering two of the Fellows, John Landreyn, D.D., and Master Ralph Redruth, to assume the government of the College, pending the termination of the dispute; and by other letters of May 23rd, the Archbishop, Robert Rugge, Chancellor of the University, and John Bloxham, Warden of Merton, were commissioned to hear the parties and give final judgment and sentence. Under this commission some sentence may have been given in favour of Kirkton, though of this no record has been discovered. At all events the King’s Sergeant-at-arms was ordered, October 26th, to put him in peaceable possession of the Provostship. This order was again, January 4th, 1386-7, revoked by Letters Patent, reciting that Kirkton had before Arundel, then Chancellor and Bishop of Ely, renounced all his claims. Meanwhile the Archbishop had proceeded independently and more slowly. On the 4th of May he had commissioned Master John Barnet, official of the Court of Canterbury, and Master John Baketon, Dean of Arches, to hear Middleton’s appeal; and a like commission to Barnet alone was issued on the 21st of November. Under the last commission sentence was given in favour of Middleton, and an order was sent, 26th February, 1386-7, to the Chancellor of Oxford, and to John Landreyn for his due induction.

Middleton died at Hereford, 27th June, 1394, and was succeeded by John Maldon, M.A., B.M., and Scholar in Divinity, “nuper & in ultimis diebus consocius et conscolaris juratus.” In the record of the election in the Lincoln Register, the names of twelve other Fellows appear as electors. The most important memorial of his period of office now preserved is the Register of College muniments, compiled in 1397, perhaps under the hand of Thomas Leyntwardyn, Fellow, and afterwards Provost. This valuable record consists of a carefully arranged catalogue of all the deeds, charters, and muniments of title then in the College possession. Prefixed to the Register is a Calendar, noting the anniversaries, obits, and other days to be observed in the College in commemoration of its founders and benefactors. Maldon died early in 1401-2. By his will, dated January 21st, he made various bequests to the College, and to individual Fellows. One book, at least, belonging to him is still in the library.

Hitherto the materials for the history of the College have mainly consisted of the title-deeds relating to the property from time to time acquired, the purchases being in the first instance made in the names of a certain number of the Fellows, these again handing it on to some of their successors, until the College felt itself in a position to apply for a license in mortmain to enable it to hold the property in its corporate character. In this way it is possible to make out a tolerably full list of the early members of the College. From about the time of the compilation of the earliest Register, in 1397, this source of information is no longer very productive. Compared with the abundance of deeds of the fourteenth century, which are catalogued in the Register of 1397, the fifteenth century is singularly deficient. Fortunately, however, the want is supplied by other sources of information of more interest. The earliest book of treasurer’s accounts, still preserved, extends from 1409 to 1415. The income of the College was made up of the rents of Oxford houses, about £53; the tithes of its three churches, Aberford, Coleby, and Littlemore, belonging to St. Mary’s, about £35; and the proceeds of offerings in St. Mary’s Church, about £28. The net income, after deducting repairs and other outgoings on property, was between £80 and £90. The principal items of expenses were (1) the commons of the Provost and Fellows, at the rate of 1_s._ 3_d._ per week per head; (2) battells, the charge for allowances in meat and drink to other persons employed in and about the College, servants, journeymen, labourers, tilers, and the like, including also the entertainment of College visitors, the clergy of St. Mary’s, or the city authorities; (3) exceedings, “excrescentiae,” the cost incurred on any unusual occasion of College festivity, wine drunk on the feasts of Our Lady, pittances distributed among the members of the College on certain prescribed days, and similar extraordinary expenses. The amounts expended are accurately recorded for each week, the week ending, according to the practice which continues at Oriel to the present day, between dinner and supper on Friday. The total of these charges amounted to about £40. The stipends of the Provost and of the College officers, the payments to the Vicar of St. Mary’s and the four chaplains, the wages of College servants, and the ordinary cost of the College fabric, are the principal other items of expenditure.

In 1410, the long-standing dispute with the University as to Cobham’s library was set at rest, through the mediation of Archbishop Arundel. Not long afterwards a sum of money was raised by contributions from members of the College, and from parishioners of St. Mary’s, for renewing the internal fittings of the church, the University giving £10 _pro choro_. On the completion of the work, the Chancellor and the whole congregation of regents and non-regents were regaled with wine, at a cost of eight shillings, including oysters for the scrutineers.