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|ORIEL COLLEGE was founded by Adam de Brome, almoner to King Edward II.,
in 1324. He was Rector of St. Mary's, whose spire forms with the dome
of the Radcliffe a background to the view of Oriel Street, and obtained
leave from the king to transfer the Church and its revenues to his
College. The College originally had the same title as the Church, but
five years after its foundation it received from King Edward III. a
messuage known as _La Oriole_ (a title of disputed meaning), and from
this date was renamed "Oriel College."
The Front Quadrangle, whose exterior and interior are here depicted,
was erected in the first half of the seventeenth century. Viewed from
without, it has an air of quiet dignity; but the visitor will be even
better pleased when he has passed the Porters Lodge. A striking feature
is the central flight of steps, with a portico, by which the Hall is
reached. On either side of the statues of the two kings (Edward II. and
Charles I.) stretches a trio of finely moulded windows, flanked by an
oriel to right and left. Mr. Matthison clearly made his drawing when the
"Quad." was gay with flowers and Eights-week visitors, but at no season
is it anything but beautiful. The Garden Quadrangle, which lies to the
north and includes the Library, was built during the eighteenth
century. The adjacent St. Mary Hall, with its buildings, was recently
incorporated with Oriel, on the death of its last Principal, Dr. Chase.
Among famous men nurtured at this College were Raleigh, Prynne, Bishop
Butler, and Gilbert White, the naturalist; but it was in the first half
of the nineteenth century that Oriels intellectual renown was at its
highest. To recall the names of Pusey, Keble, Newman, Whately, and
Thomas Arnold suffices to indicate the subject which most preoccupied
the Oxford of that epoch. Oriel seemed fated to be the seat of religious
controversy, from the seventeenth century days of Provost Walter Hodges,
whose _Elihu_, a treatise on the Book of Job, brought him into suspicion
of favouring the sect of Hutchinsonians. Happily there was some tincture
of humour in the differences of those days. When this Provost resented
the imputation, his detractors told him that a writer on the Book of
Job should take everything with patience. Controversy apart, any College
might be proud of a group of Fellows of whom one became an archbishop,
another a really great headmaster, and a third a cardinal. Oriel has
had poets, too, within her gates, for in a later day Clough and Matthew
Arnold won fellowships here.
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But Oriel has had no more dutiful son, if liberality is any measure of
dutifulness, than Cecil Rhodes. It is too soon to appraise the value of
his scholarship scheme, which provides an Oxford education for numerous
colonial and foreign students; but his old College, which benefited
so largely by the provisions of his will, can have no hesitation in
including him among its benefactors.