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.

The Bible or one of the Fathers was to be read in hall during 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.

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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--”

ran some verses of 1667.[77] But if we may judge from a story to be told hereafter of the respective prosperity of the two Colleges, it was rather Trinity which had the right to look down upon its rival at that time. In the eighteenth century the buildings of Balliol were considerably enlarged by the erection of two staircases westward of the Master’s house, by Mr. Fisher of Beere, and of three running north of these over against St. Mary Magdalen Church. The fronts of the east side of the quadrangle, reputed to be the most ancient part of the College, and of part of the south side adjoining it, were rebuilt.[78] The direction of the hall was reversed, so that instead of the passage into the garden, the entrance to the hall, and the buttery being beneath the Master’s lodgings, they were placed on the northern extremity of the hall.[79] In the present reign a further addition to the College was made in the place of the dilapidated “Cesar,” and with it a back porch with a tower above it was built. Then followed the rebuilding of the Chapel and, after an interval, of two sides of the front quadrangle and of the Master’s house. A little later the garden was gradually enclosed by buildings on the north side, which were completed in 1877 by a hall with common room, buttery, kitchen, and a chemical laboratory beneath it.

* * * * *

It is very difficult to obtain any accurate knowledge of the number of persons ordinarily inhabiting a College in past times. A few lists happen to have been preserved, but their accuracy is not free from suspicion. Thus, a census of 1552 enumerates under the head of Balliol seven Masters, six Bachelors, and seventeen others, these seventeen including the manciple, butler, cook, and scullion.[80] In ten years this list of thirty names has grown to sixty-five: six Masters, thirteen Bachelors, and forty-six others, eight of whom were Scholars, five “poor scholars”--presumably batellers,--and four servants.[81] By 1612 the number appears to have nearly doubled, and comprises the Master and eleven Fellows, thirteen Scholars, seventy commoners, twenty-two “poor scholars,” and ten servants; in all a hundred and twenty-seven:[82] a total the magnitude of which is the more perplexing since the College matriculations between 1575 and 1621 averaged hardly more than fifteen a-year.[83] No doubt, in the days when several students shared a bedroom, it was possible even for a small College to give house-room to a far larger number than we can imagine at the present time; but still it is hard to understand how so many as a hundred and twenty persons could be accommodated in the then existing buildings of Balliol. According to the procuratorial cycle of 1629, Balliol ranks with University, Lincoln, Jesus, and Pembroke, among the smallest Colleges.[84] In recent times, taking years by chance, we find the number of Fellows, Scholars, and Commoners in the _University Calendar_ for 1838 to be 102, in that for 1859 to be 122, in 1878 about 195, and in 1891 about 187.[85] That the College has been able to count so many resident members is partly owing to the extension of the College buildings, but much more to the modern Statute whereby all members of the College are not necessarily required to live within the College walls.

* * * * *

Notices of the domestic history of Balliol during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are surprisingly scanty. In the following pages we have gathered together such particulars as we have thought of sufficient interest to be recorded in a brief sketch like the present. Early in the seventeenth century the life of the College was varied by the presence of two Greek students, sent over by Cyril Lucaris, the Patriarch of Constantinople, to whom England owes the gift of the Codex Alexandrinus. One of these, Metrophanes Critopulos, became Patriarch of Alexandria. The other, Nathaniel Conopios, we are told “spake and wrote the genuine Greek (for which he was had in great Veneration in his Country), others using the vulgar only,” and was a proficient in music. He took the degree of B.D., and was made Bishop of Smyrna. Evelyn remarks that he was the first he “ever saw drink coffee, w^{ch} custom came not into England until 30 years after.”[86] Our next note is of a different character. Soon after the Scholars endowed by Tisdale[87] were established in Cesar’s lodgings, a dispute arose between one of them, named Crabtree, and Ferryman Moore, a freshman of three weeks’ standing. Crabtree called Moore an “undergraduate” and pulled his hair; whereupon Moore drew his knife and stabbed him so that he died. In the trial that followed Moore pleaded benefit of clergy and was condemned to burning in the hand, but at the petition of the Vice-Chancellor, Mayor, and other Justices, received the Royal pardon on the 19th November, 1624,--the very year in which the benefaction that had brought his victim to Balliol was settled in its lasting home in Pembroke College.[88] A little later, in 1631, we find one Thorne, a member of Balliol, preaching at St. Mary’s against the King’s Declaration on Religion of 1628: he was expelled the University by Royal order.[89] The famous John Evelyn, who was admitted a Fellow Commoner of the College in May 1637, being then in his seventeenth year, tells us that “the Fellow Com’uners in Balliol were no more exempt from Exercise than the meanest scholars there, and my Father sent me thither to one Mr. George Bradshaw,” who was Master from 1648 to 1651. “I ever,” he adds, “thought my Tutor had parts enough, but as his ambition made him much suspected of y^{e} College, so his grudge to Dr. Lawrence, the governor of it (whom he afterwards supplanted), tooke up so much of his tyme, that he seldom or never had the opportunity to discharge his duty to his scholars. This I perceiving, associated myself with one Mr. James Thicknesse, (then a young man of the Foundation, afterwards a Fellow of the House,) by whose learned and friendly conversation I received great advantage. At my first arrival, Dr. Parkhurst was Master; and after his discease, Dr. Lawrence, a chaplaine of his Ma’ties and Margaret Professor, succeeded, an acute and learned person; nor do I much reproach his severity, considering that the extraordinary remissenesse of discipline had (til his coming) much detracted from the reputation of that Colledg.” Later Evelyn mentions that his Tutor managed his expenses during his first year. In January 1640 “Came my Bro. Richard from schole to be my chamber-fellow at the University,” so that even Fellow Commoners did not always have rooms to themselves. It is noticeable that the chief studies which Evelyn speaks of engaging in are those of “the dauncing and vaulting Schole” and music; and one is not surprised to read that when he quitted Oxford in April 1640, without taking a degree, and made his residence in the Middle Temple, he should observe, “My being at the University, in regard of these avocations, was of very small benefit to me.”[90]

When King Charles was at Oxford, Balliol, with the great majority of Colleges, handed over its plate to him, 20 January 1642/3. The weight of the metal was only 41 _lb._ 4 _oz._, less than that of any other College recorded.[91] When the Parliamentary Visitation began in 1647. Thomas Lawrence was Master and also Margaret Professor of Divinity. After a while he submitted to the Visitors’ authority and then resigned his offices. In the Mastership he was succeeded by George Bradshaw, Evelyn’s tutor.[92] Apparently about half the members of the College in time made their submission.[93] From 1651 the Mastership was held by Henry Savage, a man of cultivation, who had travelled in France, and here at least deserves to be remembered as the author of the first and only history of his College, a work to which we have been constantly indebted for its transcripts and extracts from the muniments.[94] On his death in 1672 he was succeeded by Thomas Good,--one of the first of those who submitted to the Parliamentary Visitors[95]--whom Wood describes as when resident in College “a frequent preacher, yet always esteemed an honest and harmless puritan.”[96] He is best known from the stories which Humphrey Prideaux tells about him. According to him the Master “is a good honest old tost, and understands business well enough, but is very often guilty of absurditys, which rendreth him contemptible to the yong men of the town.”[97] One of these stories he does “not well beleeve; but however you shall have it. There is over against Baliol College a dingy, horrid, scandalous alehouse, fit for none but draymen and tinkers and such as by goeing there have made themselves equally scandalous. Here the Baliol men continually ly, and by perpetuall bubbeing ad art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots. The head, beeing informed of this, called them togeather, and in a grave speech informed them of the mischiefs of that hellish liquor cald ale, that it destroyed both body and soul, and adviced them by noe means to have anything more to do with it; but on of them, not willing soe tamely to be preached out of his beloved liquor, made reply that the Vice-Chancelour’s men drank ale at the Split Crow,[98] and why should not they to? The old man, being nonplusd with this reply, immediately packeth away to the Vice-Chancelour,[99] and informed him of the ill example his fellows gave the rest of the town by drinkeing ale, and desired him to prohibit them for the future; but Bathurst, not likeing his proposall, being formerly and [_sic_] old lover of ale himselfe, answared him roughly, that there was noe hurt in ale, and that as long as his fellows did noe worse he would not disturb them, and soe turned the old man goeing; who, returneing to his colledge, calld his fellows again and told them he had been with the Vice-Chancelour, and that he told them there was noe hurt in ale; truely he thought there was, but now, beeing informed of the contrary, since the Vice-Chancelour gave his men leave to drinke ale, he would give them leave to; soe that now they may be sots by authority.”[100]

Another story of the same time connecting Balliol and Trinity Colleges is told of Dr. Bathurst, President of Trinity and the “Vice-Chancelour” named in the foregoing quotation. “A striking instance,” says Thomas Warton, “of zeal for his college, in the dotage of old age, is yet remembered. Balliol College had suffered so much in the outrages of the grand rebellion, that it remained almost in a state of desolation for some years after the restoration: a circumstance not to be suspected from its flourishing condition ever since. Dr. Bathurst was perhaps secretly pleased to see a neighbouring, and once rival society, reduced to this condition, while his own flourished beyond all others. Accordingly, one afternoon he was found in his garden, which then ran almost contiguous to the east side of Balliol-college, throwing stones at the windows with much satisfaction, as if happy to contribute his share in completing the appearance of its ruin.”[101]

Indeed, that Balliol was by no means in a state of prosperity after the Restoration may be gathered from the facts that it is described as possessing but half the income of Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s, and containing but twenty-five commoners;[102] and that in 1681 the College was taken by the opposition Peers for lodgings during the Oxford Parliament.[103] In January the Earl of Shaftesbury, together with the Duke of Monmouth, the Earls of Bedford and Essex, and twelve other Peers, subscribed a petition praying that the Parliament should sit not at Oxford but at Westminster; and when they found they could not move the King, Shaftesbury promptly set about securing rooms at Oxford. John Locke, who conducted negotiations for him, reported on the 6th February that the Rector of Exeter would be happy to place three rooms in his house at his Lordship’s disposal, “but that the whole college could by no means be had.” Dr. Wallis’s house was also inspected, and it was soon discovered that Balliol College was at the Peers’ service. From a letter however from Shaftesbury to Locke, of the 22nd February, it seems that he himself and Lord Grey occupied Wallis’s house, and “dieted” elsewhere, no doubt at Balliol.[104] On their departure Shaftesbury and fourteen other Peers--almost exactly the same list as that of the petitioners of the 25th January--presented to the College “a large bole, with a cover to it, all double guilt, 167 _oz._ 10 _dwts_,”[105] which was melted down into tankards many years since.

The history of the College during the greater part of the eighteenth century coincides with the life of Dr. Theophilus Leigh, who took his Bachelor’s degree from Corpus in 1712, was appointed Master of Balliol fifteen years later, and held his office until 1785. Hearne records the circumstances of his election in a way which implies that he owed his success to an informality, with more than a hint of nepotism on the part of the Visitor.[106] Six years after his death Martin Routh was elected President of Magdalen College. He died in 1855; so that the academical lives of these two men overlapping just at the extremities cover a period of not less than a hundred and forty-six years. In Leigh’s days Balliol was sunk in the heavy and sluggish decrepitude which characterized Oxford at large. The _Terrae Filius_--doubtless an authority to be received with caution--reviles the Fellows for the perpetual fines and sconces with which they burthened the undergraduates;[107] and it is stated that Adam Smith, when a member of the College, was severely reprimanded for reading Hume.[108] It is certain that, at least when Leigh was first a Fellow, the College did not even trust the undergraduates with knives and forks, for these, we are assured, were chained to the table in hall, while the trenchers were made of wood.[109] There was “a laudable custom” which lasted on to a later generation “of the Dean’s Visiting the Undergraduats Chambers at 9 o’ Clock at Night, to see that they kept good hours.”[110]

It was before nine o’clock on the 23rd February 1747-8 that a party was gathered there which led to serious consequences. In spite of the failure of the rebellion of 1745 the zealous ardour of some Jacobite members of the College waxed so warm that they and their guests paraded down the Turl shouting _G--d bless k--g J----s_, until they reached Winter’s coffee-house near the High Street, where Mr. Richard Blacow, a Canon of Windsor, was sitting “in company with several Gentlemen of the University and an Officer in his Regimental Habit,” about seven o’clock in the evening. Mr. Blacow tells us with righteous indignation how he not only heard treasonable and seditious expressions in favour of the exiled family, but also such cries as _d--n K--g G----e_. Being a young Master of Arts and very much on his dignity, he went forth into the street to check the outrage, but was only met by a rough handling on the part of the rioters, who stood shouting in St. Mary Hall Lane in front of Oriel College; so that Mr. Blacow was glad to make good his retreat within the College gate. Reappearing after a while he was on the point of being attacked, when his assailant was carried off by the Proctor. Another, Luxmoore, B.A. of Balliol, took to his heels. After this the loyal Canon sought in vain to induce the Vice-Chancellor to take steps for the trial of the offenders; but he could by no means be prevailed upon. At length, as the scandal spread abroad, the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, requested Mr. Blacow to lay an information before him; and three members of the University were tried for treason in the King’s Bench. Of the two who belonged to Balliol one, Luxmoore, was acquitted; the other Whitmore, with Dawes of St. Mary Hall,--both undergraduates barely twenty years of age,--were sentenced to a fine, to two years’ imprisonment, to find securities for their good behaviour for seven years, “to walk immediately round Westminster Hall with a libel affixed to their foreheads denoting their crime and sentence, and to ask pardon of the several courts.”[111]

The letters of Robert Southey, who entered Balliol as a commoner in 1792, do not give an unfavourable impression of the condition of the College just after Leigh’s death. His own peculiarities of taste and temper placed him doubtless in uncongenial surroundings,--he refused the assistance of the College barber and wore his curly hair long,--but his complaint is not of the College but of the University system in general. The authorities are “men remarkable only for great wigs and little wisdom.” “With respect to its superiors, Oxford only exhibits waste of wigs and want of wisdom; with respect to the undergraduates, every species of abandoned excess.” In his second year, with the haughty air of a senior man, he found the freshmen “not estimable”; but he made friends in College, and two of his first four comrades in the great Pantisocratic scheme were Balliol men. Even his tutor, Thomas Howe, delighted him by being “half a democrat,” and still more by the remark--“Mr. Southey, you won’t learn any thing by my lectures, Sir; so, if you have any studies of your own, you had better pursue them.” Rowing and swimming, Southey used to say, were all he learned at Oxford; but with two years’ residence, and a term missed in them, with Pantisocracy and _Joan of Arc_, we may doubt whether it was all Oxford’s fault.[112]

The real revival of Balliol College began after the election of John Parsons as Master in 1798. He succeeded to the Vice-Chancellorship in 1807 unexpectedly, on the death of Dr. Richards, Rector of Exeter, after a single year of office. “He was a good scholar,” says Bedel Cox, “and an impressive preacher, though he did not preach often; above all, he was thoroughly conversant with University matters, having been for several years the leading, or rather the working, man in the Hebdomadal Board. Indeed, he had the great merit of elaborating the details of the Public Examination Statute at the end of the last century. His subsequent promotion” to the Bishopric of Peterborough “was considered as the well-earned reward of that his great work. Dr. Parsons had also the credit of laying the foundation of that collegiate and tutorial system which Dr. Jenkyns afterwards so successfully carried out.”[113] Those who may think the establishment of the examination system a questionable benefit may be comforted by knowing that for many years it was conducted entirely _vivâ voce_, while the requirements for degrees in the time preceding the change were so notoriously perfunctory that the old method could not possibly be maintained. In the Colleges too the tutorial system, in its principle--as still at Cambridge--a disciplinary system, had long outlived its vitality; and Dr. Parsons deserves credit not merely for invigorating it, but for setting on a firm foundation an organization for teaching undergraduates as well as for keeping them in order.

But it was not to be expected that these reforms should bear full fruit for many years. Sir William Hamilton, who was at Balliol from 1807 to 1810, describes himself as “so plagued by these foolish lectures of the College tutors that I have little time to do anything else--Aristotle to-day, ditto to-morrow; and I believe that if the ideas furnished by Aristotle to these numbskulls were taken away, it would be doubtful whether there remained a single notion. I am quite tired of such uniformity of study.”[114] He was however unfortunately placed under an eccentric tutor named Powell, who lived furtively in rooms over the College gate and was never seen out except at dusk. “For a short time Hamilton and his tutor kept up the formality of an hour’s lecture. This however soon ceased, and for the last three years of his College life Hamilton was left to follow his own inclinations.”[115] But, as Dr. Parsons said, “he is one of those, and they are rare, who are best left to themselves. He will turn out a great scholar, and we shall get the credit of making him so, though in point of fact we shall have done nothing for him whatever.”[116] Yet in later years the philosopher speaks of the “College in which I spent the happiest of the happy years of youth, which is never recollected but with affection, and from which, as I gratefully acknowledge, I carried into life a taste for those studies which have contributed the most interesting of my subsequent pursuits.”[117]

Hamilton’s freshman’s account of the daily life and manners of the College deserves quotation: its date is 13 May, 1807. “No boots are allowed to be worn here, or trousers or pantaloons. In the morning we wear white cotton stockings, and before dinner regularly dress in silk stockings, &c. After dinner we go to one another’s rooms and drink some wine, then go to chapel at half-past five, and walk, or sail on the river, after that. In the morning we go to chapel at seven, breakfast at nine, fag all the forenoon, and dine at half-past three.”[118]

Under Dr. Parsons as Master, and Mr. Jenkyns as Tutor and then Vice-Master on the Head’s elevation to the see of Peterborough, the College continued steadily to improve. Mr. Jenkyns succeeded to the Mastership on the Bishop’s death in 1819. But there were still two points in the constitution of the College which were felt to be out of keeping with the spirit of modern education. One was the direct nomination of each Scholar, except those on the Blundell Foundation, by a particular Fellow in turn; and the other, the obligation under which all the Fellows lay of taking Priest’s orders. The former arrangement was revised by a new Statute sanctioned by the Visitor in 1834, which placed all the Scholarships, with the exception named, in the appointment of the Master and Fellows after examination. At the same time the College yielded to the tendency of the time which brought undergraduates to the University older than formerly, and raised the age below which candidates were admissible to scholarships from eighteen to nineteen.[119] The other question was settled by a decision in 1838 that the obligation of Fellows to take holy orders did not debar candidates from election who had no such purpose in mind, provided of course that their tenure of Fellowships terminated at the date by which according to the Statutes they were bound to be ordained.[120]

In the same year that this decision was given Mr. Benjamin Jowett, afterwards Regius Professor of Greek and since 1870 Master of the College, was elected to a Fellowship. He has committed to writing in a most interesting letter to the son of William George Ward, famous for his share in the Oxford Movement and for his degradation by Convocation in 1845, his recollections of the Fellows as they were when he was elected to their membership; but we have only room here for a short extract from his account of Master Jenkyns, “who was very different from any of the Fellows, and was held in considerable awe by them. He was a gentleman of the old school, in whom were represented old manners, old traditions, old prejudices, a Tory and a Churchman, high and dry, without much literature, but having a good deal of character. He filled a great space in the eyes of the undergraduates. ‘His young men,’ as he termed them, speaking in an accent which we all remember, were never tired of mimicking his voice, drawing his portrait, and inventing stories about what he said and did.… He was a considerable actor, and would put on severe looks to terrify Freshmen, but he was really kind-hearted and indulgent to them. He was in a natural state of war with the Fellows and Scholars on the Close Foundation; and many ludicrous stories were told of his behaviour to them, of his dislike to smoking, and of his enmity to dogs.… He was much respected, and his great services to the College have always been acknowledged.”[121]

When we consider the progress made by Balliol College during the years between 1813, when Jenkyns became Vice-Master, and 1854, when he died, we may perhaps venture to question whether the balance between “old manners, old traditions, old prejudices,” and new manners, new traditions, new prejudices, does not hang very evenly. But into this we are not called upon to enter. The Statutes made by the University Commission of 1850 made fewer changes in the condition of Balliol than of most Colleges, because the most inevitable reforms had been carried into effect already. The Close Fellowships were opened, and the majority of the Fellowships were released from clerical obligations. The moment which witnessed the promulgation of the new Statutes witnessed also the death of Dean Jenkyns and the succession of Robert Scott. But here we may well conclude the story of the Balliol of the past. To carry it down further would require much more space than the limits of this chapter permit; and besides, the Balliol of the present is a new College in a different sense from perhaps any other College in Oxford. No other College has so distinctly parted company with its traditions beyond the lifetime of men now living. The commemoration of founders and benefactors on St. Luke’s Day has long been given up, and the Latin grace in hall has not been heard for many years. The College buildings are for the greater part the work of the present reign. In the new hall the portraits which strike the eye behind the high table are all those of men who were alive when the hall was opened in 1877. Bishop Parsons and Dean Jenkyns are seen above them, while in the obscurity of the roof may be discerned the pictures--unhistorical, as in other Colleges, it need not be said--of John Balliol and Dervorguilla his wife. A visitor from the last century would see little that he could recognize; but when he entered the common room after dinner he would notice one highly conservative custom revived. In 1773 it had been the lament of older men, that

“Nec Camerae Communis amor, qua rarus ad alta Nunc tubus emittit gratos laquearia fumos;”[122]

but in late years the practice of smoking has been regularly admitted even in those sacred precincts.

Every College has its own ideal, and that of Balliol has been by a steady policy adapted to the modern spirit of work, employing the best materials not so much for learning as an end in itself as a means towards practical success in life. In this field, in the distinctions of the schools, of the courts, and of public life, it has been seldom rivalled by any other College. But it is remarkable that in the long and distinguished list of its men of mark we find, speaking only of the dead, no Statesman and not many scholars of the first rank. The College has excelled rather in its practical men of affairs, diplomatists, judges, members of parliament, civil service officials, college tutors, and schoolmasters. At the present moment it counts among former members no less than seven of her Majesty’s Judges and seven Heads of Oxford Colleges. But to show that another side of culture has been represented at Balliol in the present reign, we must not forget the band of Balliol poets, Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Algernon Charles Swinburne.