A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

Rise of Colleges

By far the most important event in the academical history of the thirteenth century was the foundation of University, Balliol, and Merton Colleges. The idea of secular colleges, it is true, was not wholly new. Harold’s foundation at Waltham, afterwards converted into an abbey, was originally non-monastic, and designed to be a home for secular priests, but it was not an educational institution. There were colleges for the maintenance of poor scholars at Bologna; rather, however, in the nature of the Oxford halls. If the founders of the earliest Oxford college were indebted for their inspiration to any foreign source, they must have derived it from the great French University in Paris, of which the collegiate system already formed a distinctive feature. Not to speak of still more ancient colleges at Paris, either attached to monasteries or serving the purpose of mere lodging-houses, the Sorbonne, founded about 1250, furnishes a striking precedent for its Oxford successors, as an academical cloister specially planned for the education of the secular clergy. Nevertheless, there is no proof that its constitution was actually imitated or studied by the founder of any Oxford college, and there is one important difference between the Paris and Oxford colleges, that whereas the former were appropriated to special faculties, the latter welcomed students in all faculties. It is, therefore, by no means improbable that in the development of the college system, as in the original incorporation of schools into an academical body, like causes produced like results by independent processes at the French and English Universities.

Foundation of University and Balliol

The claim of University College to priority among Oxford colleges cannot be disputed, if the foundation of a college is to be dated from the earliest of the endowments afterwards appropriated to its support. It was in 1249 that William of Durham left by will a sum of 310 marks to the University of Oxford for the maintenance of ten or more Masters, being natives of the county of Durham, in lodgings to be provided at Oxford out of this fund. Two houses in School Street, Oxford, and one in High Street, were purchased by the University before 1263, and were probably occupied by students. There was, however, no royal charter of incorporation, no provision for corporate self-government, or for the succession of fellows, no organised society, no distribution of powers or definition of duties. In a word, the institution founded by William of Durham was not a college, but an exhibition-fund to be administered by the University. It was not until 1292 that this scattered body of exhibitioners was consolidated into ‘the Great Hall of the University,’ as it was then called, under statutes which are a very meagre copy of those issued nearly thirty years earlier by Walter de Merton, and which, unlike his, were imposed, not by the founder, but by the University itself. Meanwhile, at some time between 1263 and 1268, John Balliol, of Barnard Castle, father of John Balliol, king of Scotland, provided similar exhibitions for poor scholars at Oxford. His intention was completed by his wife, Dervorguilla, who collected the recipients of his bounty into a single building on the present site of the college, increased the endowments so that it might support a body of sixteen exhibitioners with a yearly stipend of twenty-seven marks apiece, and in 1282 issued statutes regulating the new foundation, but fully conceding the principle of self-government.

Foundation of Merton College

In the meantime Merton College had been founded on a far larger scale, and had received statutes which, viewed across the interval of six centuries, astonish us by their comprehensive wisdom and foresight. As an institution for the promotion of academical education under collegiate discipline but secular guidance, it was the expression of a conception entirely new in England, which deserves special consideration, inasmuch as it became the model of all other collegiate foundations, and determined the future constitution of both the English Universities. In this sense, Merton College is entitled to something more than precedence, for its founder was the real founder of the English college-system.

Merton College, Statutes of, 1274

The oldest foundation charter of Merton College, issued in 1264, was itself the development of still earlier schemes for the support of poor scholars, in scholis degentes. It established an endowed ‘House of the scholars of Merton’ at Malden, in Surrey, under a warden or bailiffs, with two or three ‘ministers of the altar.’ Out of the estates assigned to this collegiate house were to be maintained a body of twenty students in a hall or lodging at Oxford, or elsewhere, if a more flourishing studium generale should elsewhere be instituted. In 1274, Walter de Merton, having greatly expanded his first design, put forth his final statutes, transferring the warden, bailiffs, and ministers of the altar, from Malden to Oxford, and designating Oxford as the exclusive and permanent home of the scholars. These statutes, which continued in force until the year 1856, are a marvellous repertory of minute and elaborate provisions governing every detail of college life. The number and allowances of the scholars; their studies, diet, costume, and discipline; the qualifications, election, and functions of the warden; the distribution of powers among various college officers; the management of the college estates, and the conduct of college business, are here regulated with truly remarkable sagacity. The policy which dictated and underlies them is easy to discern. Fully appreciating the intellectual movement of his age, and unwilling to see the paramount control of it in the hands of the religious orders—the zealous apostles of Papal supremacy—Walter de Merton resolved to establish within the precincts of the University a great seminary of secular clergy, which should educate a succession of men capable of doing good service in Church and State. He was not content with a copy or even a mere adaptation of the monastic idea; on the contrary, it may be surmised that he was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the spirit of those non-monastic institutions, now almost forgotten, in which the parochial clergy of an earlier age had sometimes lived together under a common rule. The employment of his scholars was to be study—not the claustralis religio of the older religious orders, nor the more practical and popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and Franciscans. He forbade them ever to take vows; he enjoined them to maintain their corporate independence against all foreign encroachments; he ordained that all should apply themselves to studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering upon a course of theology; and he provided special chaplains to relieve them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even encouraged their going forth into the great world, only reminding those who might win an ample fortune (uberior fortuna) to show their gratitude by advancing the interests of the college. No ascetic obligations were laid upon them, but residence and continuous study were strictly prescribed, and if any scholars retired from the college with the intention of giving up learning, or even ceased to study diligently, their salaries were no longer to be paid. If the scale of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was chiefly because the founder intended the number of his scholars to be constantly increased, as the revenues of the house might be enlarged. He even recognised the duty of meeting the needs of future ages, and empowered his scholars not only to make new statutes, but even to migrate elsewhere from Oxford in case of necessity.

Social position, manners, and academical life of early students

If we seek to measure the effect produced by the rise of colleges on the character of the University, we must endeavour to realise the aspect of University life and manners before colleges were planted in Oxford. The students, as we have seen, were lodged in religious houses, licensed halls, or private chambers. The former were mostly destined to swell the ranks of the regular clergy, and, it may be presumed, were subjected to some wholesome rules of discipline, independent of any authority exercised by the University. As they also received the whole or the greater part of their instruction within the walls of their convents, they probably were rarely seen in the streets, cultivated a certain degree of refinement, and took comparatively little part in the riots which constantly disturbed the peace of Oxford in the Middle Ages. With the other two classes it was far otherwise. Even the inmates of halls lived in a style and under conditions which, in our own age, would be regarded as barbarism. Like other scholars, they were chiefly drawn from a social grade below that of esquires or wealthy merchants. Many of them were the less vigorous members of yeomen’s or tradesmen’s families; not a few sprang from the very lowest ranks, and actually begged their way to Oxford. The majority had probably come as mere schoolboys, at the age of eleven or twelve, to one of the numerous grammar-schools which prepared their pupils for the higher studies taught in the ‘Schools of Oxford’ properly so called. It was for these younger scholars, we may suppose, that regular ‘fetchers’ and ‘bringers’ were licensed by the University, as we learn from a document of 1459, though some were attended by private servants. The older scholars, however, doubtless travelled in parties, for the sake of protection and economy, with their scanty baggage slung over the backs of pack-horses. Having safely arrived in Oxford, they would disperse to their several halls; and it does not appear that, at this period, a freshman underwent any process of matriculation or took any oath before acquiring the privileges of the University. He would, of course, share his bedroom, if not his bed, with others, and be content with the roughest fare, but he must also have dispensed with nearly all the manifold aids to study now enjoyed by the humblest students. Books existed only in the form of costly manuscripts treasured up in the chilly reading-rooms of monasteries; privacy was as impossible by day as by night; and the only chance of acquiring knowledge was by hanging upon the lips of a teacher lecturing to a mixed class of all ages and infinitely various attainments, in an ill-lighted room, unprovided with desks or fireplace, which in these days would be condemned as utterly unfit for an elementary school-room. The principal of his hall, it is true, was supposed to be his tutor, but we have positive evidence, in a statute of 1432, that principals themselves were sometimes illiterate persons, and of doubtful character; nor was it until that year that it was necessary for them to be graduates. What kind of language he would hear, and what kind of habits he would learn, from his chamber-mates and class-mates in the century preceding the age of Chaucer, we can be at no loss to imagine. And yet the inmate of a hall, being under some kind of domestic superintendence, was a model of academical propriety compared with the unattached students, or ‘chamber-dekyns,’ whose enormities fill so large a space in the mediæval annals of the University.