appointed from the members of the college. Besides this assistance, disputations were carried on in the college to prepare its students for their public exercises.

In process of time the superior advantages of this systematic preparation for the University teaching and exercises, as well as the greater convenience and comfort afforded by the buildings and domestic arrangements resulting from the accumulated generosity of successive benefactors-many of whom owed their success in life to their early admission as poor students into one of these colleges-led more wealthy students to desire a participation therein; and they gladly paid rent, and charges for food and instruction. But this privilege was scantily granted, and can hardly be said to have become general until after the Reformation. Old members of a college also, who had lost the privilege of free residence and maintenance by having acquired ecclesiastical promotion or property, were permitted to return to its walls, upon payment of their expenses1.

The buildings of these communities, each complete in itself, resembled in many respects those of the monasteries, or chapters of secular canons, as being constructed for a community of persons living under a rule, or body of statutes. At first growing up gradually, piece by piece, as funds were provided, and as the collegiate system, in its development by successive foundations, shewed the kind of building required, the earlier colleges were often humble in appearance and retiring in position. But, as colleges increased in number and importance, pride of architectural grandeur and beauty became an element of collegiate character, and each new founder strove to make his college superior to the last in the magnitude and completeness of its structures.

The word college (collegium) is a term which properly belongs to a number of persons incorporated as colleagues for certain common purposes, and has no relation to the buildings in which they dwell. It is solely in this sense that it is employed in the charters of the early colleges in both universities. The words applied to the buildings in the same documents are

1 [In the reign of Queen Elizabeth an order was made at King's College limiting the number of such pensioners (pensionarii) to fifteen. A short historical sketch of the collegiate community will be found in the next chapter.]

house (domus) and hall (aula). [To understand the real significance of the composite designations given to these foundations, it must be remembered that in the thirteenth century dwellinghouses were commonly known by one of three names: house (domus), hall (aula), and hostel or inn (hospitium). When one of these was appropriated by endowment as a fixed residence. for a body of scholars (collegium), it was styled House of scholars (domus scholarium), or Hall of scholars (aula scholarium), a compound phrase indicating such appropriation. Thus Merton College, Oxford (Domus scolarium de Merton), is not the "House of the scholars of Merton," but the "House-of-scholars of Merton," or, in brief, "Merton House"; the Domus scholarium sancti Michaelis is not the "House of the scholars of S. Michael," but the "House-of-scholars of S. Michael," or "Michael House"; the Aula scholarium Regis is not the "Hall of the scholars of the King," but the "Hall-of-scholars of the King,” or “King's Hall." In some cases the two names are combined. Peterhouse is called the "House of S. Peter, or Hall-of-scholars of the Bishop of Ely (domus sancti Petri, sive Aula scholarium Episcopi Eliensis)"; and the society of Balliol College, "the Master and scholars of the Hall or House of Balliol in Oxford (aula sive domus de Balliolo)."]

We first meet with the word college in the licence granted by King Edward II. to Adam de Brom in 1324, empowering him to "found a college of scholars to be governed by a Rector, to be called the Rector of the House of scholars of the Blessed Mary in Oxford," afterwards called Oriel College. Here the persons and their dwelling are clearly distinguished as a college and a house respectively. In this or a similar form the nomenclature continues for nearly sixty years.

For example, in 1341, Robert de Eglesfield is licensed to "construct a collegiate Hall (aulam collegialem) of scholars, etc., by the name of the Queen's Hall of Oxford'." In 1347 a similar licence is granted to Marie de Valence, Countess of Pembroke, for "a scholars' house (domus scolarium)" at Cambridge, the members of which are spoken of in subsequent documents as "the college of the hall of Valense Marie"; and a

1 Commiss. Docts. (Oxford), Vol. i. Statutes of Queens' College, p. 4.

copy of the charter, in French, dated 1357-58, is endorsed la chartre du gardein et escoliers de la sale de Valence Marie. In 1348 Edmund Gonville is empowered to establish "a college of twenty scholars, and to give a name to the said college," which name, as we learn from a subsequent document, was, "the house or hall of the Annunciation of Blessed Mary the Virgin, in English Goneville Hall." In the preamble to the statutes which Bishop Bateman gave to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1350, the three words occur together, in a way which defines their meaning more clearly than any other foundation-deed which we have met with. The Bishop declares that:

"We, William of Norwich, by Divine permission Bishop of Norwich, make, ordain, appoint, and establish, in the University of Cambridge, where we, though unworthy of it, received our degree of Doctor, a perpetual college (collegium) of scholars in Canon and Civil Law. And our pleasure is that the aforesaid college of scholars be called the college of scholars of the Holy Trinity of Norwich, and that the house (domus) which the aforesaid college shall inhabit, be named the Hall (aula) of the Holy Trinity of Norwich'."

In 1359 the Lady Clare decrees that University Hall is for the future to be called the House (domus) of Clare; and that her fellows are to swear on admission that they "will promote the honour of the college of the aforesaid House?"

In this manner the word college became introduced, but the buildings were still termed Halls; the word House (domus) being used only in the very early instances above quoted-as in the following foundations: Clare Hall, King's Hall, Pembroke Hall, Gonville Hall, Trinity Hall.

The licence granted by King Richard II. to William of Wykeham, 30 June, 1379, permits him "to found and give a name to a certain college, house, or hall (collegium, domum, sive aulam)," and accordingly, in the preamble to his statutes, he declares that he has founded two perpetual colleges of poor scholars, the one commonly called Saint Mary College of Winchester in Oxenford, the other Saint Mary College of Winchester, these titles being written in English, as above, though the document in which they appear is in Latin. Here, for the first

1 Commiss. Docts. ii. 415.

2 Commiss. Docts. ii. 121, 131.

3 Commiss Docts. (Oxford), Vol. i. Statutes of New College, pp. v. 1.

time, the word college is applied to the whole establishment, but still in a manner not violating its proper sense. In this form all the succeeding foundations are named; and it is curious to remark that in the Oxford charters and statutes the founders are careful to supply an English title in imitation of Wykeham, who, however, could not prevent the substitution of "New College" for his own lengthy denomination. The succeeding founders in both universities have been more fortunate, for although the public has abbreviated the legal style they have rarely transformed the name so entirely. Even the strange term "Brasenose College" is to be found in the preamble to the statutes, which styles it the King's Haule and Colledge of Brasennose in Oxford.

At Cambridge the term college was similarly applied to King's College, and to every succeeding case except the modest foundation of a Master and three fellows termed the Hall of S. Katerine." The persons for whom the first foundations of King Henry VI. was intended, are styled in the letters patent, dated 12 February, 1441, "the rector and scholars of the King's College of S. Nicholas of Cambridge"; but in the statutes he follows the example of Wykeham and describes his two foundations respectively, in English, as: The King's Colledge of our Lady and S. Nicholas in Cambridge, and The King's Colledge of our Lady of Eaton beside Windesore, designations which have been shortened by common use into King's College and Eton College. Queens' College was first named the College of S. Bernard. When Queen Margaret refounded it she called it the "Queen's College of S. Margaret and S. Bernard"; but when Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV., accepted the patronage, she in her statutes struck out the name of her predecessor's patron-saint, and reduced the title to "College of the Queen (collegium reginale)." Jesus College, statutably named "The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, S. John the Evangelist, and the glorious Virgin S. Rhadegund," is the last instance of a complete transformation of the title chosen by the founder.

[It would be beside our present purpose to enter into the difficult question of the origin of the University, which must have preceded the foundation of the earliest college by a con

siderable interval. The wholesale destruction of records in one or other of the violent attacks which the Town made upon the University in the Middle Ages has rendered accurate knowledge of this period impossible; and we have to content ourselves with the scanty information to be derived from the earliest statutes which have been preserved, and from the accounts given by Caius, Fuller, and others, in their histories of the University. It must, however, be remembered that Caius was separated by nearly three centuries from the period to which we refer, and Fuller by a still longer interval.

It may be assumed that at first the University took no cognisance whatever of the way in which students obtained lodgings. The inconvenience and discomfort of this system soon led to the establishment of what were afterwards termed Hostels, apparently by voluntary action on the part of the students themselves. "The University had no objection," says Dr Caius, "to students renting any empty houses from the townspeople which they could obtain possession of. They called them Hostels or literary Inns (hospitia seu literarum diversoria); at Oxford they are called Halls'." It would appear that at first the University accepted this arrangement without interference; but, as it presently gave rise to grave dissensions between the townspeople and the students, mainly on the question of rent, letters patent were issued by King Henry III., probably at the instance of the University, dated 7 February, 1265-66, appointing a board consisting of two Masters-or, as we should now say, two Members of the Senate-who were subsequently called Taxors, and two burgesses, whose duty it should be to tax, or regulate, for periods of five years, the rent to be paid for any house of which a scholar might happen to be in occupation2. The publication of these letters was succeeded by statutory enactments on the part of the University, which enter into details,

1 [Hist. Cantab. Acad. pp. 46–51. In a subsequent passage (p. 53) he separates the literarum diversoria from the hospitia. The distinction, however, seems to be merely one of size, and does not imply any difference of organisation. Fuller says distinctly (History, ed. Prickett and Wright, p. 63): “Know also that Inns (whereof only two, Oving's and St Paul's) differed only gradually from Hostles, as being less." The list of Hostels given below shews that Fuller is wrong in thus limiting the number of Inns.]

* [Dyer, Privileges of the University, i. 63.]