CHAPTER I

DURHAM COLLEGE: SITE, BUILDINGS,

AND HISTORY

"THE College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford, of the Foundation of Sir Thomas Pope, Knight, commonly called Trinity College," is a good illustration of that desire for permanence amid changes which, in periods of reform and even of reaction, has characterised the development of English institutions. Trinity College cannot claim any legal continuity with the ancient, and in some ways unique, foundation of Bishop Hatfield, within the precincts of which it was " erected" in 1555; but there are indications that its founder was acquainted with the circumstances of the "College of Monks of Durham Studying at Oxford"; and as one of the first among pious laymen to re-dedicate to the promotion of "true religion and sound learning" some portion of the vast wealth of the suppressed monasteries1, he must have considered it specially appropriate to secure a site and buildings at once academic and monastic. Thus,

1 Now as none were Losers employed in that service," says Fuller, " so we finde few refunding back to Charitable Uses; and perchance this man alone the thankful Samaritan who made a publique Acknowledgement." Ch. Hist. viii. § 3, 43.

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though Trinity College has flourished for only three and a half centuries, it inherits the labours of those religious" men who consecrated so fair a ground to learned quiet more than six centuries before these days of socialist orators and street music.

DURHAM COLLEGE was one of the dependent Cells of the great Benedictine Abbey of St. Cuthbert on the Wear, and its inmates were Durham Monks temporarily studying at Oxford in charge of a superior who was called the "Prior Oxoniae." 1 The novices were first instructed in the cloister by their magister in the "primitive sciences" of Grammar, Logic, and Philosophy; and regulations as to study were made from time to time by the Benedictine chapters, and especially by the reforming Pope Benedict XII., whose Constitutions 2 in 1337 provided that all monasteries should send to the generalia studia one twentieth or more of their total numbers, under the rule of a prior studentium to be chosen by the Presidents of the provincial chapter. But recourse to the higher teaching of the Universities was probably forced upon the older Orders in the first instance by the brilliant success of the Friars, who had settled at Oxford early in the 13th century; and the desirability of a private hall or "manse" for monastic students was soon suggested by Walter de Merton's ingenious adaptation of monastic rules to academic life. The Benedictines had no house nearer than Abingdon or Eynsham; and in 1283 a benefactor

1 The 'Prior Oxoniae' voted with the Priors of Finchale, Holy Island, Coldingham, Jarrow, &c., at the election of a Bishop of Durham: Gilbert Elwyk is found voting as 'Prior Oxoniae' in 1316 and John of Beverley in 1333.

2 See Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 594.