By the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel, M.A., Fellow of Worcester College.
Gloucester College, 1283-1539.
The beginnings of the history of Gloucester College anticipate by nine years the establishment of Merton College upon its present site and under statutes which had assumed their final shape, by three years the code of rules drawn up by the University for the University Hall, and by one year the date of the statutes of Balliol College, statutes which preceded the establishment of students upon the present site of that College. It was in 1283 that John Giffarde, Baron of Brimsfield, on St. John the Evangelist’s day, being present in St. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester, founded Gloucester College, “extra muros Oxoniæ,” as a house of study for thirteen monks of that abbey, appropriating for their support the revenues of the church of Chipping Norton. This was the first monastic College established in Oxford. It differed from the Hall which not long after was built for the Benedictines of Durham, in that, while Durham College admitted secular students, Gloucester College was limited to monks of the Benedictine Order. It was not long before the other great English Benedictine Houses, whose students when sent to Oxford had hitherto been placed in scattered lodgings, recognized the advantage of bringing them together under common discipline and instruction and a common Head. They obtained permission therefore of the Abbey of Gloucester to share with them their house at Oxford, and to add to the existing buildings several lodgings, each appropriated to the use of one or more of the Benedictine Houses. The building made over in the first place by Giffarde had been originally the mansion of Gilbert Clare earl of Gloucester, for whom it had the advantage of being close to the Royal palace of Beaumont, in Magdalen Parish. His arms were in Antony Wood’s day still to be seen “fairly depicted in the window of the Common Hall.” It subsequently passed into the hands of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, and was exempt from Episcopal and archidiaconal jurisdiction “a tempore cujus memoria non existit.” It was from the Hospitallers that Giffarde bought the house which he made over to Gloucester Abbey. In 1290 or 1291, upon the agreement to admit other Benedictine Houses to a joint use of the College, the founder purchased four other tenements, and, obtaining a license in mortmain from Edward I., conveyed the whole to the Prior and monks. Thereupon was held at Abingdon a General Chapter of the Abbots and Priors of the Order, at which provisions were made for regulating the new buildings to be erected and for providing contributions towards the expenses, while rules were drawn up for the conduct of the College. All Benedictines of the Province of Canterbury were to have right of admission to “our common House in Stockwell Street,” and all the students were to have an equal vote in the election of the Prior. The strife and canvassing which took place over these popular elections in time arose to such a head as to create a scandal in the order, to remedy which it was decreed by a General Chapter that the author of any such disturbance should be punished by degradation and perpetual excommunication. The monks themselves, differing in this respect from the subsequent foundation of Durham College, were not permitted to study or be conversant with secular students; they were bound to attend divine service on solemn and festival days; to observe disputations constantly in term-time; to have divinity disputations once a week, and the presiding moderator was endowed with a salary of £10 per annum out of the common stock of the Order, which provided also for the expenses of their Exercises and Degrees in the matter of fees and entertainments. It was the duty of the Prior to enforce all regulations and to see that the monks preached often, as well in the Latin as in the vulgar tongue. It was further jealously stipulated that in their exercises they should “answer” under one of their own Order, a trace of the struggle between the religious orders and the University which arose to such a height in the case of the various orders of Friars.
Few structures carry their history and their purpose upon their face in a more obvious or more picturesque manner than do the still surviving remains of the old Benedictine colony. Each settlement possessed a lodging of its own “divided (though all for the most part adjoining to each other) by particular roofs, partitions, and various forms of structure, and known from each other, like so many colonies and tribes, (though one at once inhabited by several abbies,) by arms and rebuses that are depicted and cut in stone over each door.” These words of Antony à Wood are a perfect description of the cottage-like row of tenements which still form the south side of the present quadrangle, and partially apply to the small southern quadrangle, though many of the features have been in this case obliterated. But on the north side all that now remains of what is represented in Loggan’s well-known print is the ancient doorway of the College, surmounted by two shields, (there used to be three, bearing respectively the arms of Gloucester, Glastonbury and St. Alban’s,) and the adjoining buildings, which are of the same character as the tenements on the south side. The first lodgings on the north side were allotted, we are told, to the monks of Abingdon: the next were built for the monks of Gloucester. These in later days became the lodgings of the Principal of Gloucester Hall, an arrangement followed in the position of the present lodgings of the Provost of the College. On the five lodgings of the south side one may see still in place the shields described by A. Wood. Over the door at the S.W. corner is a shield bearing a mitre over a comb and a tun, with the letter W (interpreted as the rebus of Walter Compton, or else in reference to Winchcombe Abbey). Another shield bears three cups surmounted by a ducal coronet. Between these is a small niche. The chambers next in order were assigned by tradition to Westminster Abbey; and the central lodgings of the five were “partly for Ramsey and Winchcombe Abbies.” Over the doors of the easternmost lodgings again are shields, the first bearing a “griffin sergreant,” the other a plain cross. Another plain shield remains in situ in the small quadrangle; one has been removed and built into the garden wall of the present kitchen.
A. Wood gives a list of the abbies which sent their monks to Gloucester College. These were Gloucester, Glastonbury, St. Alban’s, Tavistock, Burton, Chertsey, Coventry, Evesham, Eynsham, St. Edmondsbury, Winchcombe, Abbotsbury, Michelney, Malmesbury, Rochester, Norwich. It may be presumed that other Houses of the Order made use of the place, among those whose representatives were present at the Chapter held at Salisbury the day after the interment of Queen Eleanor, 1291, when the Prior for the time being, Henry de Helm, was invested with the government of the College, and provision was made for the election of his successor.
We do not at this early date find any mention of Refectory or Chapel. The parish church was, no doubt, as in other cases, frequented by the student-monks for divine services, but they also had licence to have a portable altar. It was not till 1420, in the prioralty of Thomas de Ledbury, that John Whethamsted, Abbot of St. Alban’s, formerly Prior, contributed largely to the erection of a chapel, which stood upon the site of the present chapel. Its ruins are figured in Loggan’s sketch. He built also a Library on the south side of the chapel, at right angles to it, the five windows of which, giving upon Stockwell Street, are also depicted in Loggan’s sketch. Upon this Library he bestowed many books both of his own collection and of his own writing; and at his instance Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, besides other benefactions, gave many books to the Library. The benefits conferred by Whethamsted were such that a Convocation of the Order styled him “chief benefactor and second founder of the College.” One other name, a name of local interest, we find associated with the place as its benefactor—that of Sir Peter Besils, of Abingdon. Thus a century of dignified prosperity was assured to the College, during which period it numbered among its alumni John Langden, Bishop of Rochester; Thomas Mylling, Abbot of Westminster and afterwards Bishop of Hereford; Antony Richer, Abbot of Eynsham, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff; Thomas Walsingham the chronicler.
The dissolution of the monasteries of course involved the suppression of the Benedictine College; Whethamsted’s Chapel and Library were reduced to a ruin; and the books “were partly lost and purchased, and partly conveyed to some of the other College Libraries,” where Wood professes to have seen them “still bearing their donor’s name.”
Bishop of Oxford’s Palace, 1542-1557(?).
The College, its buildings and grounds, remained in the hands of the Crown till the thirty-fourth year of Henry’s reign, when, upon his founding the Bishoprick of Oxford, the seat of which was at Osney, it was allotted to the Bishop for his palace, and was for a certain time occupied by Bishop King, who had been the last Abbot of Osney. On the transfer of the See within three years to the church of St. Frideswyde, the endowments which had been attached to the Bishoprick and temporarily resigned to the Crown were conveyed to the new foundation, the intention of Henry VIII., who had died in the meantime, being carried out by Edward VI. But there is no mention among the endowments thus re-conveyed of Gloucester College, which remained in the possession of the Crown until it was granted by Elizabeth, in the second year of her reign, to William Doddington. He at once made it over to the newly-founded College of St. John Baptist, for whom it was purchased by the founder. The legend runs that Sir Thomas Whyte was inclined for a while to Gloucester Hall as the site of his new College, but that a dream directed him to the selection of St. Bernard’s College.
The Bishop of Oxford in 1604 revived his claim to the Hall, maintaining that the surrender to the Crown had not been acknowledged by Bishop King, nor duly enrolled in Chancery, and to try his rights he “did make an entry by night and by water, and did drive away the horses depasturing on the land belonging to the said Hall.” He failed however to make good his claim against St. John’s College.