dinner, and all conversation to be in Latin, unless addressed to
one--presumably a guest or a servant--ignorant of the language. French
was not permitted, as it was at Queen’s,[30] but the Master might
give leave to speak English on state occasions,--evidently on such a
feast as that of Saint Catherine’s day, when guests were invited and
an extraordinary allowance of 3_s._ 4_d._ was made. The condition of
residence was strictly enforced; nevertheless _in order that when, as
ofttimes comes to pass, a season of pestilence rages, the Muses be not
silent nor study and teaching of none effect by reason of the strength
of fear and peril_, it was permitted that the members of the College
should withdraw into the country, to a more salubrious place not
distant more than twelve miles from Oxford, and there dwell together
and carry on their life of study and their accustomed disputations
so long as the plague should last.[31] The gates of the College were
closed at nine in summer and eight in winter, and the keys deposited
with the Master until the morning. Whoever spent the night out of
College or entered except by the gate, was punished, a Fellow by a fine
of twelve pence, a Scholastic by a flogging.
* * * * *
Having now sketched the constitutional history of the College to the
end of the middle ages, we have now to mention a few facts of interest
during that time. These group themselves first round the name of John
Wycliffe the reformer of religion, and then round the band of learned
men and patrons of learning, the reformers of classical study, in the
century after him.
In 1360 and 1361 John Wycliffe is mentioned in the College muniments
as Master of Balliol. That this was the famous teacher and preacher is
not disputed, but there has been much controversy as to his earlier
history. That he began his University life at Queen’s is indeed known
to be a mistake; but the entry of the name in the bursar’s rolls at
Merton under the date June 1356 has led many to believe that he was a
Fellow of that College. It seems nearly certain that there were two
John Wycliffes at Oxford at the time; and since the Master of Balliol
could only be elected from among the Fellows, the inference seems
clear that the Wycliffe who was Master of Balliol cannot have been
Fellow of Merton. Besides, it has been pointed out that Wycliffe the
reformer’s descent from a family settled hard by Barnard Castle, the
home of the Balliols, would naturally lead him to enter the Balliol
foundation at Oxford; there was another Wycliffe also at Balliol,
and three members of the College--one himself Master--were given the
benefice of Wycliffe-upon-Tees between 1363 and 1369. Fellowships were
obtained by personal influence, and ties of this kind would easily
help his admission. Moreover, it was not common for a northerner to
enter a College like Merton, which appears in fact to have formed the
head-quarters of the southern party at Oxford.[32]
Whatever be the truth in this matter, Wycliffe’s connection with
Balliol is scarcely a matter of high importance. Men did not in those
days receive their education within the College walls. The College was
the boarding-house where they dwelt, where they were maintained, and
where they attended divine service. It is true that disputations were
required to take place within the House; but this was only to ensure
their regularity. It was an affair of _discipline_, not of tuition,
for the College tutor was an officer undreamt of in those days; the
duty of the Principal on these occasions was only to announce the
subject, to preside over the discussion, and to keep order. Nor again
was Wycliffe Master for more than a short time. He was elected after
1356, and he resigned his post shortly after accepting the College
living of Fillingham in 1361. When in later years he lived in Oxford
he took up his abode elsewhere than in Balliol; perhaps at Queen’s,
then, according to many, at Canterbury Hall, finally at Black Hall:
Balliol, it should seem, at that time had room only for members of the
foundation. The chief interest residing in his connection with the
College lies in the fact, to which we have alluded, that his great
exemplar, Richard FitzRalph, had been a Fellow of it about the time
of Wycliffe’s birth, and was probably still resident in Oxford when
Wycliffe came up as a freshman.
The age succeeding Wycliffe’s death is the most barren time in the
history of the University. Scholastic philosophy had lost its vitality
and become over-elaborated into a trivial formalism. Logic had ceased
to act as a stimulus to the intellectual powers, and had rather become
a clog upon their exercise; and men no longer framed syllogisms to
develop their thoughts, but argued first and thought, if at all,
afterwards. When, however, towards the middle of the fifteenth century,
the revival of learning which we associate with the name of humanism
began to influence English students, it was not those who stayed in
England who caught its spirit, but those who were able to pursue a
second student’s course in Italy, and there devote their zeal to the
half-forgotten stores of classical Latin literature and the unknown
treasure-house of Greek. It was only the ebb of the humanistic movement
which in England, as in Germany, turned to refresh and invigorate the
study of theology. In the earlier phase, so far as it affected England,
Balliol College took a foremost position, though indeed there is less
evidence of this activity among the resident members of the House than
among those who had passed from it to become the patrons and pioneers
of a younger generation of scholars. They were almost all travelled
men, who collected manuscripts and had them copied for them, founded
libraries and sowed the seed for others to reap the fruit.
First among these in time and in dignity was Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester, the Good Duke Humphrey, by whose munificence the University
Library grew from a small number of volumes chained on desks in the
upper chamber of the Congregation House at Saint Mary’s,[33] into a
collection of some six hundred manuscripts, of unique value, because,
unlike the existing cathedral and monastic libraries, it was formed at
the time when attention was being again devoted to classical learning
and with the help of the foreign scholars, whose work the Duke loved
to encourage, and whom he employed to transcribe and collect for
him. His library contained little theology; it was rich in classical
Latin literature, in Arabic science (in translations), and in the new
literature of Italy, counting at least five volumes of Boccaccio, seven
of Petrarch, and two of Dante.[34] Unhappily the whole library was
wrecked and brought to nothing in the violence of the reign of King
Edward the Sixth, and the three volumes which are now preserved in
the re-founded University Library of Sir Thomas Bodley were recovered
piecemeal from those who had obtained possession of them in the great
days of plunder.[35] That Duke Humphrey was a member of Balliol College
is attested by Leland[36] and Bale,[37] but further evidence is wanting.
Almost at the same time as the University Library was thus enriched,
five Englishmen are mentioned as students at Ferrara under the
illustrious teacher Guarino:[38] four of the five are claimed by our
College, William Grey, John Tiptoft, John Free, and John Gunthorpe.
Of these, two were men of letters and munificent patrons of learning,
the third was himself a scholar of high repute, and the last combined,
perhaps in a lesser degree, the characteristics of both classes.
William Grey stands in a peculiarly close relation with the College.
A member of the noble house of Codnor, he resided for a long time at
Cologne in princely style, and maintained a magnificent household.
Here he studied logic, philosophy, and theology. He was Chancellor of
the University of Oxford from 1440 to 1442, and then went forth again
for a more prolonged course of study in Italy, at Florence, Padua,
and Ferrara. Removing in 1449 to Rome, as proctor for King Henry the
Sixth, he lived there an honoured member of the learned society in
the papal city, and continued to collect manuscripts and to have them
transcribed and illuminated under his eyes, until he was recalled in
1454 to the Bishopric of Ely. It was his devotion to humanism and his
patronage of learned men that naturally found favour with Pope Nicolas
the Fifth, and his elevation to the see of Ely was the Pope’s act.
After his return to England he was not regardless of the affairs of
State,--indeed for a time in 1469 and 1470 he was Lord Treasurer,--but
his paramount interest still lay in his books and his circle of
scholars, himself credited with a knowledge not only of Greek but of
Hebrew. It was his desire that his library should be preserved within
the walls of his old College. One of its members, Robert Abdy, heartily
coöperated with him, and the books--some two hundred in number, and
including a _printed_ copy of Josephus,--were safely housed in a new
building erected for the purpose, probably just before the Bishop’s
death in 1478. Many of the codices were unhappily destroyed during
the reign of King Edward the Sixth, and by Wood’s time few of the
miniatures in the remaining volumes had escaped mutilation.[39] But it
is a good testimony to the loyal spirit in which the College kept the
trust committed to them, that no less than a hundred and fifty-two of
Grey’s manuscripts are still in its possession.[40]
Part of the building in which the library was to find a home was
already in existence. The ground-floor, and perhaps the dining-hall
(now the library reading-room) adjoining, are attributed to Thomas
Chase, who had been Master from 1412 to 1423, and was Chancellor of
the University from 1426 to 1430. It was the upper part of the library
which was expressly built for the purpose of receiving Bishop Grey’s
books, and it was the work of Abdy, who as Fellow and then, from 1477
to 1494, as Master devoted himself to the enlargement and adornment of
the College buildings, Grey helping him liberally with money. On more
than one of the library windows their joint bounty was commemorated:--
Hos Deus adiecit, Deus his det gaudia celi:
Abdy perfecit opus hoc Gray presul et Ely.
And again:--
Conditor ecce novi structus huius fuit Abdy:
Presul et huic Hely Gray libros contulit edi.
The bishop’s coat of arms may still be seen on the panels below the
great window of the old solar, now the Master’s dining-hall; and
elsewhere in the new buildings might be seen the arms of George
Nevill, Archbishop of York, the brother of the King-Maker, who was
also a member, and would thus appear to have been a benefactor, of
the College.[41] The future Archbishop was made Chancellor of the
University in 1453 when he was barely twenty-two years of age.[42] His
installation banquet, the particulars of which may be read in Savage’s
_Balliofergus_,[43] was of a prodigality to which it would be hard to
find a parallel: it consisted of nine hundred messes of meat, with
twelve hundred hogsheads of beer and four hundred and sixteen of wine;
and if, as it appears, it was held within the College, the resources
of the house must have been severely taxed to make provision for the
entertainment of the company, which included twenty-two noblemen,
seventeen bishops and abbots, a number of noble ladies, and a multitude
of other guests, not to speak of more than two thousand servants.
The other Balliol scholars who followed the instruction of Guarino at
Ferrara were a good deal younger than Grey; for Guarino lived on until
1460, when he died at the age of ninety. Tiptoft, who was created Earl
of Worcester in his twenty-second year, in 1449, was an enthusiastic
traveller. He set out first to Jerusalem; returned to Venice, and then
spent several years in study at Ferrara, Padua, and Rome.[44] During
this time he collected manuscripts wherever he could lay hands on
them, and formed a precious library, with which he afterwards endowed
the University of Oxford: its value was reckoned at no less than five
hundred marks.[45] His later career as Treasurer and High Constable
belongs to the public history of England. It is to be lamented that
he brought back from the Italian _renaissance_ a spirit of cruelty
and recklessness of giving pain, unknown to the humaner middle ages,
which made him one of the first victims of the revolution that restored
King Henry the Sixth to the throne. But in his death the cause of
letters received a blow such as we can only compare with that which
it suffered by the execution of the Earl of Surrey in the last days
of King Henry the Eighth. It is a strange coincidence that one of the
leaders of the restoration movement, one of those chiefly chargeable
with Tiptoft’s death, was his own Balliol contemporary, Archbishop
Nevill, the new Lord Chancellor.[46]
John Free, who graduated in 1450,[47] was a Fellow of Balliol College,
and was afterwards a Doctor of Medicine of Padua. During a life spent
in Italy he became famous as a poet and a Greek scholar, a civilist
and a physician.[48] Pope Paul the Second made him Bishop of Bath and
Wells, but he died almost immediately, in 1465.[49] Gunthorpe was his
companion in study at Ferrara, and he too became distinguished as a
scholar: but he was still more a collector of books, some of which he
gave to Jesus College, Cambridge--at one time he was Warden of the
King’s Hall in that University,--while others came to several libraries
at Oxford. Gunthorpe is best known as a man of affairs, a diplomatist
and minister of state. He became Dean of Wells, and is still remembered
in that city by the _guns_ with which he adorned the Deanery he
built.[50] He survived all his fellow-scholars we have named, and died
in 1498.[51]
* * * * *
From the end of the middle ages down to the present century Balliol
College presents none of those characteristics of distinction which
we have remarked in the fifteenth century. During this time, indeed,
although in the nature of things a large number of men of note
continued to receive their education at Oxford, there was no College
or Colleges which could be said to occupy anything like a position
of peculiar eminence or dignity. In the general decline of learning,
education, and manners, Balliol College appears even to have sunk below
most of its rivals, and its annals show little more than a dreary
record of lazy torpor and bad living.[52] The Statutes of the College
received no alterations of importance. Its power to choose its own
Visitor was indeed for a time overridden by the Bishop of Lincoln, who
was considered _ex officio_ Visitor until Bishop Barlow’s death in
1691;[53] and the _Scholastici_ became distinguished as _Scholares_
from an inferior rank of _Servitores_ with which the Statutes of 1507
had identified them. Another lower class of students, called Batellers,
also came into existence. Every Commoner was required by a rule of 1574
to be under the Master or one of the Fellows as his Tutor;[54] Scholars
being apparently _ipso facto_ subject to the Fellows who nominated
them. In 1610 it was ordered, with the Visitor’s consent, that Fellow
Commoners might be admitted to the College and be free from “public
correction,” except in the case of scandalous offences; they were not
bound to exhibit reverence to the Fellows in the quadrangle unless they
encountered them face to face,--_reverentiam Sociis in quadrangulo
consuetam non nisi in occursu praestent_. Every such Commoner was
bound to pay at least five pounds on admission for the purchase of
plate or books for the College.[55] The sum was in 1691 raised to ten
pounds.[56] As the disputations in hall tended to become less and less
of a reality, and the lectures in the schools became a pure matter of
routine for the younger Masters, provision had to be made for something
in the way of regular lectures, but fixed tuition-fees were not yet
invented, and so the richest living in the gift of the College--that
of Fillingham in Lincolnshire, which had been usually held by the
Master and was now attached to his office--was in 1571 charged with the
payment of £8 13_s._.4_d._ to three Prelectors chosen by the College
who should lecture in hall on Greek, dialectic, and rhetoric.[57] The
lectures, it was soon after decided, were to be held at least thrice
a week during term, except on Feast Days or when the lecturer was
ill. Any one who failed to fulfil his duty--either in person or by a
deputy--was to pay twopence _to be consumed by the other Fellows at
dinner or supper on the Sunday next following_.[58] In 1695 the famous
Dr. Busby, who had before shown himself a friend to the College,[59]
established a Catechetical Lecture to be given on thirty prescribed
subjects through the year, at which all members of the College were
bound to be present.[60] This Lecture was maintained until recent years.
During the two centuries following the reign of King Edward the Third
the College had received little or no addition to its corporate
endowments, though, as we have seen, it had been largely helped by
donations towards its buildings, and above all by the foundation of
its precious library.[61] Between the date of the accession of Queen
Elizabeth and the year 1677, in the renewed zeal for academical
foundations which marked that period, the College received a number
of new benefactions; and these introduced a new element into its
composition. Hitherto all the Fellowships had been open without
restriction of place of birth or education; and although it is likely
that the College in its earlier days drew its recruits mainly from the
north of England, yet there was nothing in the Statutes to authorize
the connection. The College, it is true, was a very close corporation,
for Fellow nominated Scholar, and out of the Scholars the Fellows
were generally elected. Still, in contradistinction to the majority
of Colleges, there were no local limitations upon eligibility to
Scholarships. The new endowments, on the other hand, with the exception
of those of the Lady Periam, were all so limited. First, by a bequest
of Dr. John Bell, formerly Bishop of Worcester, two Scholarships
confined to natives of his diocese were founded in 1559,[62] and in
1605 Sir William Dunch established another for the benefit of Abingdon
School.[63] A little later Balliol nearly became possessed of the much
larger endowment, of seven Fellowships and six Scholarships, attached
to the same school by William Tisdale. Indeed part of the money was
paid over, six Scholars were appointed, and Cesar’s lodgings--of which
more hereafter--were bought for their reception.[64] But a subsequent
arrangement diverted the endowment, which in 1624 helped to change the
ancient Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College.[65] In the meanwhile
a more considerable benefaction, also connected with a local school,
accrued to Balliol between 1601 and 1615, when in execution of the will
of Peter Blundell one Fellowship and one Scholarship were founded to
be held by persons educated at Blundell’s Grammar School at Tiverton,
and nominated by the Trustees of the School.[66] The next endowment
in order of time was that of Elizabeth, widow of Chief Baron Periam
and sister of Francis Bacon. The nomination to the Fellowship and two
Scholarships which she founded in 1620, she reserved to herself for her
lifetime; afterwards they were to be filled up in the same manner as
the other Fellowships of the College.[67]
After the Restoration two separate benefactions set up that close
connection between the College and Scotland which saved Balliol from
sinking into utter obscurity in the century following, and which has
since contributed to it a large share of its later fame. Bishop Warner
of Rochester, who died in 1666, bequeathed to the College the annual
sum of eighty pounds for the support of four scholars from Scotland to
be chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Rochester;
and about ten years later certain Exhibitions were founded by Mr.
John Snell for persons nominated by Glasgow University. The latter
varied in number according to the proceeds of Mr. Snell’s estate; at
one time they were as many as ten and of the yearly value of £116,
but their number and value have since been reduced. Both of these
foundations were expressly designed to promote the interests of the
Episcopal Church in Scotland.[68] Their importance in the history of
the College cannot be overestimated, and it is to them that it owes
such names among its members as Adam Smith, Sir William Hamilton, and
Archbishop Tait, to say nothing of a great company of distinguished
Scotsmen now living. The Exhibitioners have also as a rule offered an
admirable example of frugal habits and hard work; and perhaps it was
in consideration of their national thriftiness that the rooms assigned
them are noticed in 1791 as mean and incommodious.[69]
Among more recent benefactions to the College the most important is
that of Miss Hannah Brakenbury who, besides the questionable service of
contributing towards the rebuilding of the front quadrangle, endowed
eight Scholarships for the encouragement of the studies of Law and
Modern History. Nor should we omit to mention the two Exhibitions of
£100 a-year each, founded under the will of Richard Jenkyns, formerly
Master, which are awarded by examination to members of the College,
and the list of holders of which is of exceptional brilliancy. But in
recent years the number of Scholarships and Exhibitions has been most
of all increased not by means of any specific endowment but by savings
from the annual internal income of the College. In pursuance of the
ordinances of the Universities’ Commission of 1877, Balliol became
the owner of New Inn Hall on the death of its late Principal; and the
proceeds of the sale of the Hall, when effected, are to be applied to
the establishment of Exhibitions for poor students.
* * * * *
We now resume the history of the College buildings. We have seen that
the Chapel was built early in the reign of King Edward the Third,
and that the hall and library buildings were added in the following
century.[70] A new Chapel was built between 1521 and 1529,[71] which
lasted until the present century. It contained a muniment-room or
treasury, “which,” says Anthony Wood, “is a kind of vestry, joyning on
the S. side of the E. end of the chappel;”[72] and there was a window
opening into it, as at Corpus, from the library.[73] With the present
Chapel in one’s mind it is hard to estimate the loss which from a
picturesque point of view the College has suffered by the destruction
of its predecessor. In modern times Oxford has ever been a prey to
architects. The rebuilding of Queen’s is an example of what happily
was not carried into effect at Magdalen and Brasenose in the last
century; but in the present, Balliol is almost peculiar in the extent
to which these depredations have run, and those who remember the line
of buildings of the Chapel and library as they looked from the Fellows’
garden say that for harmony and quiet charm they were of their kind
unsurpassed in Oxford. Among the special features of the old Chapel
were the painted windows, particularly the great east window given by
Lawrence Stubbs in 1529. The fragments of this are distributed among
the side windows of the modern Chapel, and even in their scattered
state are highly regarded by lovers of glass-painting.[74] Of the
later buildings of the College, “Cesar’s lodgings” must not pass
without notice. It had its name from Henry Caesar, afterwards Dean
of Carlisle--the brother of Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls
(1614-1636),--and stood opposite to where the “Martyrs’ Memorial” now
is. Being currently known as _Cesar_, an opposite stack of buildings
to the south of it was naturally called _Pompey_. The two were pulled
down, not before it was necessary, in the second quarter of the present
century.[75] Hammond’s lodgings, which came to the College in Queen
Elizabeth’s time, and stood on the site of the old Master’s little
garden and the present Master’s house, were occupied by the Blundell
and Periam Fellows.[76]
Before the front of the College was a close, planted with trees like
that in front of St. John’s.
“Stant Baliolenses maiore cacumine moles,
Et sua frondosis praetexunt atria ramis;
Nec tamen idcirco Trinam sprevere minorem
Aut sibi subiectam comitem sponsamve recusant--”