Vice-Chancellor, Gilbert Ironsyde, S.T.P., Rob. Say, Byron Eaton,
Master of Oriel, W. Lovett, Tho. Hyde, Chief Librarian, Tho. Turner,
President of C.C.C., Jonath. Edwards, S.T.P., Thom. Dunstan, Pres. of
Magdalen College, Will. Christmas, Jun. Proctor, and others. After the
Litany had been repeated, the Vice-Chancellor prorogued the meeting
to the common-room, where were present the afore-mentioned Fellows,
and in addition Edw. Farrar, Jo. Gilve, Jo. Nailor, Jo. Hudson. The
Fellows preferred a complaint that the statutes of the Realm, of the
University, and of the College had been violated by Obadiah Walker,
Master or Senior Fellow of the College. They objected in particular
that he had left the religion of the Anglican Church, established
and confirmed by the statutes of this Realm, and betaken himself to
the Roman or papistical religion; that he had held, fostered, and
frequented illegal conventicles within the aforesaid College; that he
had procured to be sequestred unto wrong uses and against the statutes
the income and emoluments of the Society; also that he had had printed
books against the Reformed religion, and that within the College, and
had published the same unto the grave scandal as well of the University
as of the College. All these charges were amply proved by trustworthy
witnesses, whereupon the visitors decreed that the post of Mr. Obadiah
Walker was void and vacant. At the same time, at the instance of the
said Fellows, Masters Boyse and Deane, Fellows of the College, who had
left the religion of the reformed Anglican Church, were ordered to be
proceeded against so soon as a new Master or Senior Fellow was chosen.”
Mr. Obadiah Walker lived for many years after the accession of William
and Mary. He was a man of great piety and vast and varied learning, as
is shown by his books upon Religion, Logic, History, and Geography. He
wrote a book upon Greenland, and made experiments in physics. A near
friend of the great benefactor of the College, Dr. John Radcliffe,
he sought to convert that famous physician to the Roman faith, but
found him as little inclined to believe in transubstantiation as “that
the phial in his hand was a wheelbarrow.” In spite of their want of
religious sympathy, however, the two men liked each other’s society,
and the great physician, who respected Walker’s learning, gave him a
competency during the latter years of his life. In the College archives
is an elegant letter addressed by O. Walker, then Master, to Radcliffe,
thanking him for his gift of the east window of the College chapel. It
runs thus:
“Sir, we return you our humble and hearty thanks for your
noble and illustrious benefaction to this ancient foundation;
your generosity hath supplyed a defect and covered a blemish
in our chapell; the other lesse eminent windows seemed to
upbraid the chiefest as being more adorned and regardable than
that which ought to be most splendid; till you was pleased to
compassionate us and ennoble the best with the best work. Other
benefactions are to be sought out in registers and memorialls,
yours is conveyed with the light. The rising sun displays
the gallantry of your spirit, and withall puts us in mind as
often as we enter to our devotions to remember you and your
good actions towards us. Nor can we salute the morning light
without meditating on y^{e} Shepherds and y^{e} Angells adoring
the true Sun. And y^{r} holy praise and prostration by your
singular favour is continually proposed, as to our sight and
consideration, so to our example also. And so we do accept and
acknowledge it, not only as an object moving our devotions,
but as praise of y^{e} artificer who hath not only observed much
better decorum and proportion in his figures, but hath all so
ingeniously contrived that the light shall not be hindred as by
y^{e} daubery of y^{e} others.”--The letter concludes with a prayer
that Dr. Radcliffe may prosper in his profession.
The following quaint “letter sent by the College to begge contributions
towards the building the East Side of the quadrangle about y^{e} end of
1674 or beginning of 1675 to the gentlemen in the North Parts” may
fitly conclude our notice of this college (_vide_ MSS. W. Smith, x.
239).
“Gentlemen,
“Your aged mother, and not yours alone, but of this whole
University, if not all other such nurseries of Learning, at
least in this nation, craves your assistance in the Time of
her Necessity. It is not long since her walls Ruining and her
Buildings, almost, after so many years, decayed; It pleased
God to excite two of her sonnes in especiall manner, M^{r}
Charles Greenwood, the tutor, and S^{r} Simon Benett, his pupill,
to compassionate her decay, Repair her Ruins and Renew with
Great Augmentation her former glory. But the late civil warrs
and other alterations intervening not only interrupted that
progresse which in a small time would have finished the work;
But also disappointed her of the Assistance of Diverse, who
were willing to contribute to her repairs.
* * * * *
“And we have very good Hopes that you will not be wanting to us
in this our Necessity; this being a college designed for and
most of the preferment in it limitted to Northern Scholars.
A college which hath had the felicity to be herselfe at this
present time DCCC. years old.… In recompense she may justly
expect that as she hath fostered your youths, so you would
cherish her age.”
_Additional Notes._
p. 9. On Clerical Fellows.--It should be added that the statutes
of 1736 provided that the two senior Fellows of the foundation of
Sir Simon Bennet might study Medicine or Law. In 1854 the general
ordinances of the Commissioners provided that there should be six
(_i. e._ half of the) Fellows in Holy Orders. More recently clerical
Fellowships have been practically abolished in the College.
p. 14. Anti-Norman feeling.--A spirit of Rivalry with Cambridge may
with more reason be alleged in explanation of the acceptance of the
Aluredian Legend.
p. 14. On the Legend of King Alfred.--The Court of King’s Bench only
decided that the College is a Royal Foundation, not that it was
actually founded by King Alfred. Cp. the Preamble of Statutes of 1736:
“it manifestly appears by a Judgement lately given in our Court of
Kings Bench that the college of the great Hall of the University,
commonly called University College, in Oxford, is of the foundation of
our Royal Progenitors.”
p. 23. On Northern Scholars.--The College lost its one-sided Northern
character in 1736, when new statutes ordained that Sir Simon Bennet’s
Fellows were to come from the Southern Province of Canterbury (in
partibus regni nostri Australibus oriundi).
II.
BALLIOL COLLEGE.[7]
BY REGINALD L. POOLE, M.A., BALLIOL COLLEGE.
The precedence of Balliol over Merton College depends upon the fact
that John Balliol made certain payments not long after 1260 for the
support of poor students at Oxford, while Walter of Merton’s foundation
dates from 1264; but it was not until the example had been set by
Merton that the House of Balliol assumed a corporate being and became
governed by formal statutes. The “pious founder” too was at the outset
an involuntary agent, for the obligation to make his endowment was
part of a penance imposed on him together with a public scourging
at the Abbey door by the Bishop of Durham.[8] John Balliol, lord of
Galloway, was the father of that John to whom King Edward the First of
England adjudged the Scottish crown in 1292. His wife, the heiress,
was Dervorguilla, grandniece to King William the Lion. It is to her
far more than to her husband that the real foundation of the College
bearing his name is due, and husband and wife are rightly coupled
together as joint-founders, the lion of Scotland being associated with
the orle of Balliol on the College shield. A house was first hired
beyond the city ditch on the north side of Oxford, hard by the church
of St. Mary Magdalen, and here certain poor scholars were lodged and
paid eightpence a-day for their commons.[9] It was in the beginning a
simple almshouse, founded on the model already existing at Paris, it
depended for its maintenance upon the good pleasure of the founder, and
possessed (so far as we know) no sort of organization, though customs
and rules were certain to shape themselves before long without any
positive enactment.
This state of things lasted until 1282, when Dervorguilla,--her
husband had died in 1269,--took steps to place the House of Balliol
upon an established footing. By her charter deed[10] she appointed two
representatives or “proctors” (one, it seems probable, being always
a Franciscan friar, and the other a secular Master of Arts) as the
governing body of the House. The Scholars were, it is true, to elect
their own Principal, and obey him “according to the statutes and
customs approved among them,” but he and they were alike subordinate
to the Proctors or (as they came to be distinguished) the Extraneous
Masters. The Scholars, whose number is not mentioned, were to attend
the prescribed religious services and the exercises at the schools, and
were also to engage in disputations among themselves once a fortnight.
Three masses in the year were to be celebrated for the founders’
welfare, and mention of them was to be made in the blessing before
and grace after meat. Rules were laid down for the distribution of
the common funds; if they fell short it was ordered that the poorer
Scholars were not to suffer. The use of the Latin language (apparently
at the common table) was strictly enjoined upon the Scholars. Whoever
broke the rule was to be admonished by the Principal, and if he
offended twice or thrice was to be removed from the common table, to
eat by himself, and be served last of all. If he remained incorrigible
after a week, the Proctors were to expel him. One feature of the
Balliol Statutes which deserves particular notice is that none of them,
until we reach the endowments of the sixteenth century, placed any sort
of local restriction upon those who were capable of being elected to
the Foundation.
This charter was plainly but the giving of a constitution to a society
which had already formed for itself rules and usages with respect to
discipline and other matters not referred to in it. The “House of
the Scholars of Balliol” was placed on a still more assured footing
when its charter was confirmed by Bishop Sutton of Lincoln two years
later,[11] in which year the Scholars removed to a house bought for
them by the foundress in Horsemonger-street, a little to the eastward
of their previous abode;[12] and soon afterwards the Bishop permitted
them to hold divine service, though they still attended their parish
Church of St. Mary Magdalen on all great festivals.[13] Before the
middle of the fourteenth century the society had considerably enlarged
its position. It had bought houses on both sides of its existing
building, so that it now occupied very nearly the site of the present
front-quadrangle.[14] It received from private benefactors endowment
for two Chaplains; and in 1327, with help furnished through the
Abbot of Reading,[15] the building of a Chapel dedicated to Saint
Catherine--the special patron whom we find first associated with the
College in the letter of Bishop Sutton--was carried into effect.
But the College remained dependent upon its parish Church for the
celebration of the Mass until the Chapel was expressly licensed for
the purpose by Pope Urban the Fifth in April 1364. As early as 1310
the College had become possessed of a messuage containing four schools
on the west side of School-street, which were, according to the usual
practice, let out to those who had exercises to perform, and thus added
to the resources of the College.[16] Some unused land on this property
was afterwards conveyed to the University to form part of the site
of the Divinity School, and the University still pays the College a
quitrent for it.[17]
During this time there seems to have been an active dispute among the
Scholars as to the studies which they were permitted to pursue. Bishop
Sutton had expressly ordained that they should dwell in the House
_until they had completed their course in Arts_. It seemed naturally
to follow that it was not lawful for them to go on to a further course
of study, for instance, in Divinity, without ceasing their connection
with the House. At length in 1325 this inference was formally ratified
by the two Extraneous Masters in the presence of all the members as
well as four graduates who had formerly been _Fellows_ (a title which
now first appears in our muniments as a synonym for Scholars) of the
House.[18] One of the Extraneous Masters was Nicolas Tingewick, who
is otherwise known to us as a benefactor of the Schools of Grammar in
the University;[19] and one of the ex-Fellows was Richard FitzRalph,
afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the University and Archbishop of Armagh,
the man to whom above all others John Wycliffe, a later member of
Balliol, owed the distinguishing elements of his teaching.[20] It was
thus decided that Balliol should be a home exclusively of secular
learning; and it reads as a curious presage, that thus early in the
history of the College the field should be marked out for it in which,
in the fifteenth century and again in our own day, it was peculiarly
to excel.
But the theologians soon had some compensation, for in 1340 a new
endowment was given to the College by Sir Philip Somerville for their
special benefit. From the Statutes which accompanied his gift[21]
we learn that the existing number of Fellows was sixteen; this he
increased to twenty-two (or more, if the funds would allow), with the
provision that six of the Fellows should, after they had attained their
regency in Arts, enter upon a course of theology, together with canon
law if they pleased, extending in ordinary cases over _not more_ than
twelve or thirteen years from their Master’s degree in Arts. Such was
the rigour of the demands made upon the theological student in the
University system of the middle ages; with what results as to solidity
and erudition it is not necessary here to say.
Somerville’s Statutes further made several important changes in the
constitution of the Hall or House, as it is here called. The Principal
still exists, holding precedence among the Fellows, much like that
of the President in some of the Colleges at Cambridge; but he is
subordinate to the Master, who is elected by the society subject to
the approval of a whole series of Visitors. After election the Master
was first to present himself and take oath before the lord of Sir
Philip Somerville’s manor of Wichnor, and then to be presented by two
of the Fellows and the two Extraneous Masters to the Chancellor of the
University, or his Deputy, and to the Prior of the Monks of Durham
at Oxford. By these his appointment was confirmed. There was thus
established a complicated system of a threefold Visitatorial Board. The
powers of the lords of Wichnor were indeed probably formal; but those
of the Extraneous Masters subsisted side by side by, and to some extent
independently of, the Chancellor and the Prior. The former retained
their previous authority over the Fellows of the old foundation; they
were only associated with the Chancellor and Prior with respect to the
new theological Fellows. Finally, over all the Bishop of Durham was
placed, as a sort of supreme Visitor, to compel the enforcement of
the provisions affecting Somerville’s bequest. One wonders how this
elaborate scheme worked, and particularly how the society of Balliol
liked the supervision of the Prior of Durham College just beyond their
garden-wall. But the curious thing is that the benefactor declares that
in making these Statutes he intends not to destroy but to confirm the
ancient rules and Statutes of the College, as though some part of his
extraordinary arrangements had been already in force.[22]
It is easy to guess that the scheme was impracticable, and in fact so
early as 1364 a new code had to be drawn up. This was given, under
papal authority, by Simon Sudbury, Bishop of London, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury; but unfortunately it is not preserved. We
can only gather from later references that it changed more than it
left of the existing Statutes, and that it established Rectors (almost
certainly the old Proctors or Extraneous Masters under a new name[23])
to control the Master and Fellows, and possibly a Visitor over all.
But the one thing positive is that a right of ultimate appeal was now
reserved to the Bishop of London, who thus came to exercise something
more than the power which was in later times committed to the Visitor.
It was by his authority that in the course of the fifteenth century
the property-limitation affecting the Master was abolished, and he was
empowered to hold a benefice of whatever value;[24] and that Chaplains
were made eligible, equally with the Fellows, for the office of
Master.[25] On the one hand the dignity of the Master was increased; on
the other the ecclesiastical element was brought to the front.
The latter point becomes more than ever clear in the Statutes which
were framed for the College in 1507, and which remained substantially
in force until the Universities Commission of 1850. The cause of their
promulgation is obscurely referred to the violent and high-handed
action of a previous--possibly the existing--Visitor. The matter was
laid before Pope Julius the Second, and he deputed the Bishops of
Winchester and Carlisle, or one of them, to draw up an amended body of
Statutes which should preclude the repetition of such misgovernment.
The Statutes[26] themselves are the work of the Bishop of Winchester,
the same Richard Fox who left so enduring a monument of his piety and
zeal for learning in his foundation of Corpus Christi College. That
foundation however was ten years later, and Fox had not yet, it should
seem, formed in his mind the pattern according to which a College in
the days of revived and expanded classical study should be modelled. In
Balliol he saw nothing but a small foundation with scanty resources and
without the making of an important home of learning. The eleemosynary
character of its original Statutes he left as it was, only slightly
increasing the commons of the Fellows.[27] The Master was to enjoy
no greater allowance than Fellows who were Masters of Arts, but he
retained the right to hold a benefice. He was no longer necessarily
to be chosen from among the Fellows. The unique privilege of the
College to elect its own Visitor--how the privilege arose we know
not--is expressly declared. But the essential changes introduced in
the Statutes of 1507 are those which gave the College a distinctively
theological complexion, and those which established a class of students
in the College subordinate to the Fellows.
We have seen how the Chaplains had been long rising in dignity, as
shown by the fact that, though not Fellows, they had since 1477[28]
been equally eligible with the Fellows for the office of Master. By the
new Statutes two of the Fellowships were to be filled up by persons
already in Priest’s orders to act as Chaplains. This was in part a
measure of economy, since Fellows could be found to act as Chaplains,
but the increased importance of the latter is the more significant
since these same Statutes reduced the number of Fellows from at least
twenty-two to not less than ten. Besides this, every Fellow of the
College was henceforth required to receive Priest’s orders within four
years after his Master’s degree. Doubtless from the beginning all the
members of the foundation had been--as indeed all University students
were--_clerici_; but this did not necessarily imply more than the
simple taking of the tonsure. The obligation of Priest’s orders was
something very different. The Fellows were as a rule to be Bachelors
of Arts at the time of election. Their studies were limited to logic,
philosophy, and divinity; but they were free to pursue a course of
canon law in the long vacation. The Master’s degree was to be taken
four years after they had fulfilled the requirements for that of
Bachelor. It may be noticed that, instead of their having, according to
the modern practice, to pay fees to the College on taking degrees, they
received from it on each occasion a gratuity varying according to the
dignity of the degree.
The reduction in the number of Fellowships was evidently made in
order to provide for the lower rank of what we should now-a-days call
Scholars. In the Statutes indeed this name is not found, for it was
not forgotten that Fellow and Scholar meant the same thing: and so the
old word _scholasticus_, which was often used in the general sense
of a “student,” was now applied to designate those junior members of
the College for whom Scholar was too dignified a title. They were
to be “scholastics or servitors,” not above eighteen years of age,
sufficiently skilled in plain song and grammar. One was assigned to the
Master and one to each graduate Fellow, and was nominated by him; he
was his private servant. The Scholastics were to live of the remnants
of the Fellows’ table, to apply themselves to the study of logic, and
to attend Chapel in surplices. They had also the preference, in case
of equality, in election to Fellowships. We may add that, although the
position of these Scholars (as they came to be called) unquestionably
improved greatly in the course of time, the Statute affecting them was
not revised until 1834.[29]
The Statutes throw a good deal of light on the internal administration
of the College at the close of the middle ages. Of the two Deans,
the senior had charge of the Library, the junior of the Chapel; they
were also to assist the Master generally in matters of discipline.
The Master, Fellows, and Scholastics were bound on Sundays and
Feast-days to attend matins, with lauds, mass, vespers, and compline;
and any Fellow who absented himself was liable to a fine of twopence,
while Scholastics were punished with a flogging or otherwise at the
discretion of the Master and Dean. The senior Dean presided at the
disputations in Logic, which were held on Saturdays weekly throughout
the term, except in Lent, and attended by the Bachelors, Scholastics,
and junior Masters. The more important disputations in philosophy were
held on Wednesdays, and were not intermitted in Lent. They were even
held during the long vacation until the 7th September. At these all the
Fellows were to be present, and the Master or senior Fellow to preside.
Theological disputations were also to be held weekly or fortnightly in
term so long as there were three Fellows who were theologians to make
a quorum. The College was empowered to receive boarders not on the
foundation--what we now call commoners or persons who pay for their
commons,--on the condition of their following the prescribed course of
study (or in special cases reading civil or canon law); and the fact of
their paying seems to have given them a choice of rooms.