I.— UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.
Historical Notice of the Great Hall of the University. By Fred. C. Conybeare, M.A., late Scholar, Fellow and Praelector.
ESPITE claims raised in the 17th century to an earlier date, it is clear
that University College really owes its origin to the benefaction of
William of Durham, who died in the year 1249, and bequeathed by
will to the University of Oxford the sum of 310 marks, out of the
interest upon which he required that ten or eleven or twelve or more
masters should be maintained. About William of Durham, the true
founder of the college, we glean some scanty information from the
" History of his Times," written by Matthew Paris. We know there-
from that he was one of a number of famous English scholars
who in the year 1229 migrated from the University of Paris in
consequence of a conflict which took place in that year between the
Students and the townspeople. These Town and Gown Rows, as
they were in a later age called, were common in the middle ages
in cities to which scholars and teachers resorted, and inasmuch as
an University at that date was not located in large and sumptuous
buildings of its own, but had to conduct its disputations and lectures
in hired rooms or by permission in a neighbouring monastery or priory
or church, it was easy for the scholars, if discontented with the treat-
ment they met with in any city, to leave it and repair to another centre.
As his name implies, William of Durham must have been born and bred in that city, and was no doubt
educated in it or in the monastery of Weremouth close by. After leaving Paris we may infer, though
it is not positively stated, that he finished his studies in Oxford. In later life he was Rector of the Church
of Weremouth, but he certainly kept up his connection with Oxford, and a deed is preserved in which, "by
the name of Wilhelmus de Dunelm' dictus Mogster, he appointed an agent to collect for him the interest on
monies lent to a Nunnery only four miles from Oxford." *
The actual will of the founder is lost, and we only know its exact provisions from a report issued in 1280 or 1 28 1 by certain masters whom the University had appointed to enquire into the manner in which the Testament of Master William of Durham had been carried out. However, there still exist the deeds by which the earliest houses belonging to the College came into its possession. The first of these is dated 1253, and gives to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of Oxford the possession of a house which stood on the ground now occupied by the north-east corner of Brazenose College. This hou^e, along with four shillings quit rent from another tenement, was bought by the University as trustees for William of Durham's scholars for 36 marks. In the next year but one, 1255, a house opposite the present College Lodge was purchased for 48 marks. A third house, then or shortly after known as Brazen-nose Hall, was bought in 1262 for £$$ 6s. 8Y. sterling. This house, along with the one first purchased, completed what is now the frontage of Brazenose College upon Radcliffe Square. The rest of William of Durham's Bequest was lent by the University to the peers of the Realm, to assist them in their constitutional struggle with Henry the Third, or was used by the University for its own purposes. Thus the Commission appointed to enquire report in 1280 that Rents had been bought for William of Durham's scholars to the yearly value of only 18 marks. The "great men of the land " had at that time it seems repaid their loan, but of the remaining one hundred Pounds and ten Marks nothing was as yet then restored.
Did William of Durham's scholars from the first live together, like the members of a College, as we
- See " The Annals of Universit3' College," by William Smith, Newcastle, 1718, to which work the writer of this notice
is throughout indebted.
[ 17-18 J
