1744. Salmon, Present State of Univ., i. 423. Undergraduates consisting of Noblemen, Gentlemen-Commoners, Commoners, Scholars of the Foundation, Exhibitioners, Battlers, and Servitors.... The Commoners, I presume, are so called from their Commoning together, and having a certain portion of Meat and Drink provided for them, denominated Commons.... The Battlers are entitled to no Commons, but purchase their Meat and Drink of the Cook and Butler.
1786-1805. Tooke, Purley, 390, s.v. Battel, a term used at Eton for the small portion of food which, in addition to the College allowance, the Collegers receive from the Dames.
c. 1840. Mansfield, School-Life at Winchester College, p. 184. The expense was defrayed by the boys subscribing the last three BATTLINGS (i.e. the weekly shilling allowed each boy). This was rather an illusory coin, for we seldom actually fingered it, as some one of the College servants generally had a kind of prescriptive right to a benefit; and whenever Saturday arrived, Præfect of Hall’s valet was sure to come round to ask the boys if they would give their BATTLING to Rat Williams, or Dungy, or Pulver, or Long John, or some other equally deserving individual.
1853. Bradley, Verdant Green, II. vii. [Note]. Battels are the accounts of the expenses of each student. It is stated in Todd’s Johnson that this singular word is derived from the Saxon verb, meaning “to count or reckon.” But it is stated in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1792, that the word may probably be derived from the Low-German word bettahlen, “to pay,” whence may come our English word tale or score.
1864. Household Words, p. 188. The business of the latter was to call us of a morning to distribute amongst us our BATTLINGS, or pocket-money.
1880. Trollope, Autobiogr., i. 13. Every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money, which we called BATTELS. [This is probably a misprint—the Winchester term, as that used at other schools, is BATTLING. It was advanced out of the pocket of the Second Master.]
1886-87. Dickens, Dictionary of Oxford and Cambridge, p. 16. Battels is properly a designation of the food obtained from the College Buttery. An account of this, and of the account due to the Kitchen, is sent in to every undergraduate weekly, hence these bills also are known as BATTELS, and the name, further, is extended to the total amount of the term’s expenses furnished by the College. In some Colleges it is made essential to the keeping of an undergraduates’ term that he should BATTEL, i.e. obtain food in College on a certain number of days each week.
1889. Murray, Hist. Eng. Dict., s.v. Battels. Much depends on the original sense at Oxford: if this was ‘food, provisions,’ it is natural to connect it with “BATTLE,” to feed, or receive nourishment.... It appears that the word has apparently undergone progressive extensions of application, owing partly to changes in the internal economy of the colleges. Some Oxford men of a previous generation state that it was understood by them to apply to the buttery accounts alone, or even to the provisions ordered from the buttery, as distinct from the “commons” supplied from the kitchen; but this latter use is disavowed by others, ... but whether the BATTELS were originally the provisions themselves, or the sums due on account of them, must at present be left undecided.
Baulk, subs. (Winchester).—A false report. This is SPORTED (q.v.), not spread.
Beak, subs. (Harrow).—A master. Form-beak = Form-master.