There was no endowment at first, but the Convent maintained six to ten monks as early as 1300; in 1309 they sent the second of two gifts or loans of books; a John of Beverley is called “Prior Oxoniae” in 1333. In a deed of 1338, Edward III. announces that, in fulfilment of a vow made at Halidon Hill to God and St. Margaret, he surrenders to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, the valuable rectory of Symondburne (the title to which they were then disputing) to endow a prior and twelve monks from Durham on the site in the suburbs of Oxford, with a church and lodgings to be erected at his expense; but this plan of endowment was never carried out.
The Bishop, however, did not forget his project, and left to the College at his death the library, immense for the time, which his position as courtier, prelate, ambassador, and Chancellor had enabled him to amass, till he had more books, in his bedroom and elsewhere, “than all the bishops in England had then in their keeping.” His intention is recorded in the famous Philobiblon. It has been stated that the collection was sold by the Bishop’s executors to pay his debts; but besides indirect evidence, there is the statement of Dr. T. Cay (Master of University 1561) that he saw in bibliotheca Aungervilliana a MS. of the treatise, supposed to be the autograph. The Library retains in its windows the arms of the older society and its benefactors, and effigies of the saints of the Order, etc.; but the books, with Bishop Langley’s Augustine on the Psalms in three vols., and other additions, disappeared at the Reformation. They cannot be traced to Balliol or Duke Humphrey’s library; so perhaps they were among the purchases made by Archbishop Parker from Dr. G. Owen, or they may have been secured for the Durham Chapter by the first Dean and the first senior Canon, previously Prior of Durham and Warden of the College in Oxford respectively.
The next Bishop, Thomas of Hatfield, a secular clerk of good family, great military capacity (he was one of the commanders at Nevill’s Cross) and architectural taste, and tutor to the Black Prince, was stimulated by the examples of Islip (Canterbury College) and Wykeham to endow the Durham Hall permanently; his charter still exists in the form of a contract with the prior and convent, executed in 1380. Four trustees (including William Walworth Lord Mayor, and Master Uthred a monk of Durham, who was soon afterwards tried for heresy) will furnish money to purchase property worth two hundred marks a year, to maintain a warden and seven other student monks, under rules closely resembling those of a Benedictine cell, and also (which is a new departure) eight secular students in Grammar and Philosophy at five marks each, from Durham and North Yorkshire, on the nomination of the prior, who are to dine and sleep apart from the monks, and perform any honesta ministeria that do not interfere with their studies. These are under no obligation to take orders or vows; but must take an oath to further the interests of the Church of Durham.
No buildings are mentioned, but probably the north and east sides of the original quadrangle containing library, warden’s lodging, and rooms, had been built c. 1350. Hatfield died in 1381; the convent purchased from John Lord Nevill of Raby and appropriated the churches of Frampton (Linc.), Fishlake and Bossall (Yorks), and Roddington (Notts), giving for them £1080 and two other churches. The revenue was two hundred and sixty marks. Many of the bursarial rolls sent to Durham between 1399 and 1496 are preserved there. But the income soon declined; and even after the convent had added the church of Brantingham, there was generally a deficit.
Little further is known: Bishops Skirlaw and Langley left legacies, as did probably members of the families of Mortimer, Nevill, Kemp, Grey, Arundell, and Vernon. Several Wardens became Priors of Durham: Gilbert Kymer, physician to Duke Humphrey, and ten years Chancellor of the University, lived in the College. The Priors regulated the College from time to time; in a letter of 1467 some strong language is addressed to a fellow who had indulged in riotous living till “vix superest operimentum corporis et grabati.”
The College, though in part a secular foundation, fell with the Abbey, surrendered by Hugh Whitehead in 1540. In Henry VIII.’s valuation its income was £115 4s. 4d. (warden £22, fellows £8, scholars 4 marks, each), and it owned a sanatorium at Handborough. Out of the estates confiscated a school was endowed, as well as the Durham Chapter; a larger scheme which provided for branches at Oxford and Cambridge fell through. In 1545 the site of the College reverted to the Crown; the part occupied by the Cistercian Bernard College passed to Christ Church, and is now part of St. John’s College garden. In 1553, W. Martyn and George Owen, physician to Henry VIII. and his successors, and the grantee of Godstow nunnery, received the rest of the “backside” with the buildings, which were by that time mere canilia lustra (dog-kennels), though they had been used by Dr. W. Wright, Archdeacon of Oxford, Vice-Chancellor 1547-9, as a private hall. The site was then sold to Sir T. Pope, Owen transferring to his own estates a quit-rent of 26s. 2d. due to the Crown. In 1622, Trinity had to pay some arrears of this, which they recovered from Owen’s heirs, and settled the matter by the aid of Sir George Calvert, a Trinity man, then Secretary of State.
Sir Thomas Pope appears to have belonged to the class of Tudor statesmen of which More, Fisher, and Wolsey are representative, who, while personally attached to the traditional ideas in religious matters, did not oppose all reform; and were anxious that the revival of learning should be assisted by part at least of the funds justly taken from the monasteries, according to the precedent set by Wykeham, Chichele, and Waynflete. He was born c. 1508, at Deddington, and was the eldest son of a small landowner. After being educated at Banbury and Eton, he studied law with success. He held various offices in the Star-Chamber, Chancery, and the Mint, from 1533 to 1536, in which year he became Treasurer of the new and important Court of Augmentations, which dealt with monastic property. After five years he was succeeded by Sir Edward North, in whose family his own was merged in the next century. He obtained a grant of the arms still borne by his College; and was knighted in 1536 with the poet-Earl of Surrey. In 1546 he became Master of the Woods, etc. South of Trent, and was a privy councillor. He did not personally receive the surrender of any religious house except St. Alban’s, where he saved the abbey church; but he probably had exceptional opportunities of acquiring abbey lands. The Abbess of Godstow, where his sister was a nun, claims his protection in some letters still extant. Among his intimate friends were Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Thomas Whyte, Lord Williams of Thame, Bishop Whyte of Winchester, and many of the moderate party of the Humanists.
Under Edward VI. he withdrew from public life; but Mary recalled him to the Privy Council, and employed him on commissions connected with the Tower, Wyat’s rebellion, Gresham’s accounts, the suppression of heresy, etc. In 1555 he had to take charge of the Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield, and managed to treat her kindly without incurring suspicion. Elizabeth took an interest in his project; he writes that “the princess Elizabeth her grace, whom I serve here, often askyth me about the course I have devysed for my scollers: and that part of mine estatutes respectinge studies I have shown to her, which she likes well.” Again, when two of the junior fellows had broken the statute “de muris noctu non scandendis,” he says “they must openly in the hall before all the felowes and scolers of the collegge, confesse their faulte: and besides paye such fyne, as you shall thynke meete, whiche being done, I will the same be recorded yn some boke; wherein I will have mencion mayde that for this faulte they were clene expelled the Coll. and at my ladye Elizabeth her graces desier and at my wiffes request they were receyved into the house agayne.” He soon retired from public life, and died probably of a pestilence then epidemic, on January 29th, 1558/9, in the Priory of Clerkenwell, his favourite residence. He was buried at St. Stephen’s Walbrook, with his second wife, Margaret (widow of Sir Ralph Dodmer, Lord Mayor 1529) and his only child; in 1567 his third wife Elizabeth Blount (of Blount’s Hall, Staffs.), widow of Anthony Beresford, removed the bodies to a vault beneath the fine tomb with alabaster effigies of her husband and herself, which she erected in Trinity chapel. A contemporary writer records the magnificence of the funeral, “and aftyr to the playse to drynke with spyse-brede and wyne. And the morow masse iii songes, with ii pryke songes, and the iii of Requiem, with the clarkes of London. And after, he was beried: and that done, to the playse to dener; for ther was a grett dener, and plenty of all thynges, and a grett doll of money.” In a will, dated 1556, besides large sums to the poor, prisoners, and churches, he bequeaths money for specified purposes to Trinity with a quantity of plate, rings and various articles to his friends, e. g. his “dragon-whistle,” and his “black satten gowne with luserne-spots” (both seen in his portraits) to Sir N. Bacon and “Master Croke, my old master’s son,” considerable legacies to his relations, and the residue of his goods to his wife. His estates had been already settled; Tyttenhanger (Herts.), the country house of the abbots of St. Alban’s, went to the widow for life, afterwards to her nephew Sir Thomas Pope-Blount (whose mother was Frances Love, daughter of Alice Pope), and eventually through an heiress to the Earls of Hardwicke; his brother John Pope received estates in north-west Oxfordshire, but preferred to settle at Wroxton Abbey, which he and his descendants, the Earls of Downe, and their representatives, the Lords North and Earls of Guildford, have since held on long leases from the College; other estates passed to his widow, his uncle John Edmondes, and his nephew Edmund Hutchins. Dame Elizabeth Pope married Sir Hugh Paulet, K.G., of Hinton St. George, a statesman and soldier of some eminence. Lady Paulet usually nominated to the fellowships, scholarships, and advowsons (in one instance after an appeal to the Visitor) till her death in 1593, when she was buried in Trinity chapel with funeral honours from the University.
It is particularly noticeable that Sir Thomas Pope, having been able to provide handsomely for his family as well as for his College, did not saddle the latter with any of the preferences for founder’s-kin which proved fertile in litigation elsewhere. Indeed he appears to contemplate that his heirs will resort to the College as Commoners, and sets apart the best room for such uses if required. Accordingly we find the College constantly receiving besides presents of game, etc. substantial assistance from the Popes, Norths, and others, and sending them in return not only the traditional gloves, but money in time of need; while the college books record as undergraduates many generations of the Popes and Pope-Blounts and Norths, and members of families connected with them by descent or marriage, such as Brockett, Perrot, Danvers, Sacheverell, Combe, Greenhill, Poole, Lee (Lichfield), Bertie (Lindsay), Wentworth (Cleveland), Tyrrell, Legge (Dartmouth), Stuart (Bute), and Paulet (Poulett).