4. “Several of the choir capitals differ essentially in their ornamentation from any others in the cathedral; but resemble very closely the ornamental work in illuminated MSS. of Ethelred’s time. They[262] should consequently belong to the church as enlarged by him in 1004.
5. “The east wall of the ‘ecclesiola’ built by Didanus in the eighth century still exists, with two arches once communicating with apses, whose foundations have been discovered about two feet below the ground, with a third midway between them.”
The junction of the eleventh century, or Ethelred’s, work with the twelfth century, or Norman, is clearly visible at the north and south-west corners of the choir, and the abaci though resembling each other are of different thickness. The ashlar work is different, and the courses are not continuous.
XIV.
TRINITY COLLEGE.
By the Rev. Herbert E. D. Blakiston, M.A., Fellow of Trinity.
“The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford of the Foundation of Sir Thomas Pope, Knt., commonly called Trinity College,” is one of the first instances of the attempt to endow learning out of the funds thrown into private hands by the suppression of the monasteries. It was founded during the period of reaction, and its statutes may be characterised as transitional. Its numbers and endowments have never entitled it to rank with the larger foundations, but the vigorous character of various members of the College has saved it from obscurity. It has some mediæval associations, through its informal connexion with the older Durham College, on the vacant site of which it was established: for some years Trinity drew on the same counties, still preserves in part the old buildings, and has lately supplied several officers to the modern University of Durham. A short sketch of the history of Durham College should properly precede that of Trinity.
Durham College was originally a hall for the accommodation of students from Durham Abbey who had come to Oxford to obtain better teaching than they could find in the cloister, even before the Benedictine Constitutions of 1337, which provided that each convent should maintain at some place of higher study one in twenty of their numbers. Monastic authorities did not like the young monks to live in lodgings with the secular students, and they were originally sent in the case of Cistercians to Rewley, and of Augustinians to St. Frideswide’s. The Benedictines had houses at Reading and Abingdon, but none at Oxford; and when Walter of Merton invented the collegiate system, the Benedictines of Gloucester imitated him by the foundation of Gloucester College in 1283, which was enlarged by hostels, built after a general chapter at Abingdon, for such influential abbeys as Norwich, Glastonbury, and St. Alban’s; but the rich society at Durham, probably from the traditional hostility between North and South, stood aloof; while Canterbury established a separate “nursery” in 1363, and Croyland and others sent their students to Cambridge, and eventually founded Buckingham College, now Magdalene.
The Durham chronicler says that Hugh of Darlington (Prior of Durham 1258-72 and 1285-89) hated Richard of Houghton, who was a young man of grace, and therefore sent the monks to study at Oxford, “et eis satis laute impensas ministrabat.” Richard, sometime Prior of Lytham, may have been the “master of the novices”; he became Prior in 1289, and obtained leave to build on a site between Horsemonger Street or Canditch (Broad St.) and the King’s Highway of Beaumont (Park St.), already acquired from St. Frideswide’s, Godstow, and other grantors. Of the original buildings, presumably unmethodical in plan, some remains may survive in the lower part of the hall, and the adjoining buttery and bursary. A chapel was contemplated in 1326, but not erected till a century later; the present common-room may have been used as an oratory meanwhile.