BALLIOL COLLEGE
THIS College was originated about 1260 by John de Balliol, a baron of Durham, whose son for four years occupied the throne of Scotland. But inasmuch as John de Balliol only made provision for four students, and that as penance for an outrage, the greater credit attaches to his wife Dervorguilla, who endowed a dozen more and hired them a lodging close to St. Mary Magdalen Church, on the site where part of the present College stands. Devorguilla gave her scholars their first statutes in 1282. She bade them live temperately, and converse with one another in the Latin tongue.
Truth to tell, as the revenues at first yielded each scholar only eightpence a week, riotous living seemed hardly practicable. Benefactors, however, presently stepped in, notably Sir Philip Somervyle of Staffordshire, who in 1340 raised the weekly allowance to elevenpence, and to fifteenpence in case victuals were dear. The grateful College accepted from Sir Philip a new body of statutes, in which the now familiar title, "Master of Balliol," makes its first appearance, a title associated twenty years afterwards with the honoured name of John Wycliffe. Among later benefactors may be mentioned Peter Blundell, founder of the Devonshire school which bears his name; Lady Elizabeth Periam (a sister of Francis Bacon); and John Snell, a native of Ayrshire,—it is to his endowment that Balliol owes her most distinguished Scotsmen, such as Adam Smith, Lockhart (Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law and biographer), and Archbishop Tait.
Balliol was an early friend to the new learning, and fostered the scholarly tastes of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV., and Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (to name but two of her most prominent humanists). Duke Humphrey left his books to the University, six hundred in number—a very large collection for those days, when as yet Caxton had not revolutionised the world. And in Reformation days, when the humanities were called to account, learning found a zealous supporter in Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, who had been bred at Balliol.
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