At first the halls appear to have been mere chance associations. Each had a principal who managed its affairs; but the principal had no official status, and might even be an undergraduate. The halls correspond roughly to the fraternities of American college life. Their internal rule was absolutely democratic. The students lived together by mutual consent under laws of their own framing, and under a principal of their own electing. They were quite without fear or favor of the university. The principal's duties were to lease the hall, to be a sort of over-steward of it, and to lead in enforcing the self-imposed rules of the community. His term of office, like his election, depended on the good-will of his fellows; if he made himself disliked, they were quite at liberty to take up residence elsewhere. In the thirteenth century there was really no such thing as university discipline. The men who lived in the halls came and went as they pleased, and were as free as their contemporary in chamberdekyns to loiter, quarrel, and carouse. Chaucer's "Reeve's Tale" gives us a glimpse into "Soler Halle at Cantebregge," from which it would appear that the members were quite as loose and free as Hende Nicholas, their Oxford contemporary. But the liberty was an organized liberty. In contrast with the chaos of the life of the students in chamberdekyns, the early halls must have been brave places to work and to play in, and one might wish that a fuller record had been left of the life in them. It was their fate to be obscured by the greater splendor and permanence of the colleges to which they paved the way.
III
The English college, roughly speaking, is a mediæval hall supported by a permanent fund which the socii or fellows administer. The first fund for the support of scholars was bequeathed in 1243, but it can scarcely be regarded as marking the first college, for it provided for two scholars only, and these lived where they pleased. In 1249 William of Durham bequeathed a fund for the support of ten or more masters of arts. At first these also lived apart; it was only in 1280, after the type of the English college had been fixed, that they were formed into the body now known as University College. The first organized community at Oxford was founded by Sir John de Balliol some little time before 1266; but the allowances to the scholars, as was the case in colleges of the University of Paris, after which it was doubtless modeled, were not from a permanent fund, being paid annually by the founder. Balliol cannot therefore be regarded as the first characteristic English college. It was not until 1282 that Sir John's widow, Dervorguilla, adopted the new English idea by making the endowment of the "House of Balliol" permanent, and placing it under the management of the fellows.
The real founder of the English college was Walter de Merton. In 1264 Walter provided by endowment for the permanent maintenance of twenty scholars, who were to live together in a hall as a community; and in 1274 he drew up the statutes which fix the type of the earliest English college. The principal of Merton was not, like the principal of a mediæval hall, the temporary head of a chance community, but a permanent head with established power; and he had to manage, not the periodic contributions of free associates, but a landed estate held in permanent trust. He was called "warden," a title which the head of Merton retains to this day. This idea of a body supported in a permanent residence by a permanent fund is perhaps of monastic origin, and was accompanied by certain features of brotherhood rule. The scholars lived a life of order and seclusion which was in striking contrast to the life of the students in chamberdekyns, and even of those in the halls. But with the monastic order they had also the monastic democracy, so that in one way the government of the college was strikingly similar to that of the halls. Vacancies in the community were filled by coöptation, and the warden was elected by the thirteen senior fellows from their own number. Though partly monastic in constitution, the Hall of Merton was not properly a religious body. The fellows took no vows, and seem rather to have been expected to enter lay callings. This College of Merton was the result of a gradual development of the hall along monastic lines—a lay brotherhood of students. It was destined to work a revolution in English university life and in English university teaching. The constitutions of University and Balliol were, as I have indicated, remodeled on the lines of Merton; and other colleges were founded as follows: Exeter, 1314; Oriel, 1324; Queens, 1341; and Canterbury, now extinct, 1362, most of which were profoundly influenced by the constitution of Merton.
NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS, BELL TOWER, AND CHAPEL
It was at first no part of the duty of the elders (socii, or, as Chaucer calls them, felawes) to teach the younger. The scholars of the college received the regular mediæval education in the university. But even in Merton the germ of tutorial instruction was present. Twelve "parvuli" who were not old enough, or sufficiently used to the Latin tongue, to profit by the lectures and disputations of the university, lived in or near the colleges and were taught by a grammar master; and it appears that even the older scholars might, "without blushing," consult this grammar master on matters that "pertained to his faculty." In his relation to these older students the grammar master may be regarded as the precursor of the system of tutorial instruction.
The first college to develop regular undergraduate instruction within its walls was "S. Marie College of Winchester in Oxford," founded in 1379, by William of Wykeham. "S. Marie's" brought in so many innovations that it came to be called "New College," a title which, incongruously enough, it has retained for more than five hundred years. Wykeham's first innovation was to place the grammar master, for the greater good of his pupils, at the head of a "college" of seventy boys at Winchester, thus outlining the English system of public schools. New College was accordingly able to exclude all who had not attained the ripe age of fifteen. The effect of this innovation on the college was peculiar. When the boys came up from Winchester, they appear to have been farther advanced than most of the undergraduates attending lectures and disputes in the university schools; in any case, Wykeham arranged that the older fellows should supplement the university teaching by private tuition within the college. Little by little the New College type succeeded that of Merton. Magdalen College, founded in 1448, carried the tutorial system to its logical end by endowing lectureships in theology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. The older colleges—those of the Merton type—little by little followed this new example, so that by the end of the Middle Ages it was possible for a student to receive his entire instruction within the walls of his college. In Wolsey's splendid foundation, Cardinal College (1522), now styled Christ Church, there was a still more ample endowment for professorships. At first the college instruction was regarded as supplementary to the university teaching, though it soon became far more important. The masters of the university continued to read lectures on the recognized subjects, living as of old on fees from those who chose to listen; but they were clearly unable to compete with the endowed tutors and professors of the colleges. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the mediæval teaching master was disappearing. The only real teaching in arts—by all odds the most popular branch of study at Oxford—was given within the colleges and halls.