At the dissolution, the college was for a short while made the residence of the first bishop of Oxford. After his death it was purchased by Sir Thomas White, and by him converted into a hall for the use of his College of S. John. Gloucester Hall, now become S. John Baptist Hall, after a chequered career, was refounded and endowed in 1714 as Worcester College out of the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes. In the latter half of the eighteenth century the hall, library and chapel were built and the beautiful gardens of “Botany Bay” were acquired.
The Benedictines also held Durham Hall, on the site of the present Trinity College, having secured a property of about ten acres with a frontage of about 50 feet (including Kettell Hall) on Broad Street, and 500 feet on the “Kingis hye waye of Bewmounte.” It was here that Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, founded the first public library in Oxford. Bury had studied at Oxford and was the tutor of Edward III.; statesman and churchman, he was above all
Gateway in Garden of Worcester College things a book-lover. He had more books, it is recorded, than all the other bishops put together and, wherever he was residing, so many books lay about his bed-chamber that it was hardly possible to stand or move without treading upon them. In the Philobiblon the bishop describes his means and methods of collecting books. In the course of his visitations he dug into the disused treasures of the monasteries, and his agents scoured the Continent for those “sacred vessels of learning.” The collection of books so made he intended for the use of scholars, not merely for himself alone.
“We have long cherished in our heart of hearts,” he writes, “the fixed resolve to found in perpetual charity a hall in the reverend University of Oxford, and to endow it with the necessary revenues, for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and, moreover, to enrich the hall with the treasures of our books, that all and every one of them should be in common as regards their use and study, not only to the scholars of the said hall, but by their means to all the students of the aforesaid University for ever.”
And he proceeds to lay down strict regulations based on those of the Sorbonne, for the use and preservation of his beloved books and the catalogue he had made of them.
Richard of Hoton, prior of Durham Monastery, had begun in 1289 the erection of a college building to receive the young brethren from that monastery, whom his predecessor, Hugh of Darlington, had already begun to send to Oxford to be educated. This colony of Durham students it was apparently Richard de Bury’s intention to convert into a body corporate, consisting of a prior and twelve brethren. And in gratitude for the signal defeat of the Scots at Halidon Hill, Edward III. took the proposed college under his special protection. Bury, however, died, and died in debt, so that he himself never succeeded in founding the hall he intended. His successor, Bishop Hatfield, took up the scheme, and entered into an agreement with the prior and convent of Durham for the joint endowment of a college for eight monks and eight secular scholars. This project was completed, by agreement with his executors, after his death (1381).
But what became of the books of the bishop and bibliophile, Richard de Bury? Some of them, indeed, his executors were obliged to sell, but we need not distrust the tradition which asserts that some of them at least did come to Oxford. There, it is supposed, they remained till Durham Hall was dissolved by Henry VIII., when they were dispersed, some going to Duke Humphrey’s library, others to Balliol College, and the remainder passing into the hands of Dr George Owen, who purchased the site of the dissolved college.