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BALLIOL COLLEGE.
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had after not many years to give way toa newcode drawn
up under papal authority by Simon Sudbury, Bishop of
London, in 1364. In this the old Proctors or Extraneuos
Masters survive under the name of Rectors, but the
ultimate control was left with the Bishop of London.
These Statutes continued in force until 1507 when a
new body of Statutes - the work of Bishop Foxe, of
Winchester, the founder of Corpus Christi College -
wasenacted, which remained, with small modifications,
the law of the College until 1854. The College was
now declared to possess the unique privilege of electing
its own Visitor. ' But the essential changes introduced
in the Statutes of 1507 are those which gave the
College a distinctively theological complexion, and
those which established a class of students in the
College subordinate to the Fellows.' Two Chaplain-
Fellowships were established, and all the other
Fellows, whose number was reduced, were called
upon to take Priest's Orders within four years after
their degree of M.A. 'Doubtless from the begin-
ning all the members of the foundation had been — as
indeed all University students were — clerici; but this
did not necessarily imply more than the simple taking
of the tonsure. The obligation of Priest's orders was
something very different. '
' The reduction in the number of Fellowships was evidently made in order to provide for the lower rank of what we should nowadays call Scholars. In the Statutes, indeed, this name is not found, for it was not forgotten that Fellow and Scholar meant the same thing ; and so the old word scholasticus, which was often used in the general sense of a "student," was now applied to designate those junior members of the College for whom Scholar was too dignified a title. They were to be "scholastics or servitors," not above eighteen years of age, sufficiently skilled in plain song and grammar. One was assigned to the Master, and one to each graduate Fellow, and was nominated by him ; he was his private servant. The Scholastics were to live of the remnants of the Fel- lows' table, to apply themselves to the study of logic, and to attend Chapel in surplices. They had also the preference, in case of equality, in election to Fellow- ships ' The position of these Scholars (as they came to be called) unquestionably improved greatly in the course of time, but the Statute affecting them was not remodelled until 1834.
Another point of interest in the Statutes of 1507 is the provision, authorising a practice which was not a new one, that the College might receive boarders not on the foundation - what we now call Commoners or persons who pay for their commons and rooms — on the condition of their following a prescribed course of study ; and the fact of their receiving no allowance seems to have given them a choice of rooms They represented the aristocratic element in the College, and were in time distinguished by rank, fees, and privileges in hall, as Commoners and Fellow Commoners. 'The Master, Fellows, and Scholastics were bound on Sundays and Feast-days to attend matins, with lauds, mass, vespers, and compline ; and any Fellow who absented himself was liable to a fine of twopence, while Scholastics were punished with a flogging or otherwise at the discretion of the Master and Dean . . . The Bible or one of the Fathers was to be read in hall during dinner, and all conversation to be in Latin, unless addressed to one — presumably a guest or a servant — ignorant of the language. French was not permitted as it was at
Queen's The gates of the College were
closed at nine in summer and eight in winter, and
the keys deposited with the Master until the morn-
ing;' and so late as the middle of the eighteenth
century the Dean was wont to visit the under-
graduates' rooms at nine o'clock at night ' to see
that they kept good hours.' ' Whoever spent the night
out of College or entered except by the gate, was
punished, a Fellow by a fine of twelve pence, a
Scholastic by a flogging.' •
Among the famous men who belonged to Balliol during the earlier centuries of its history, we may mention Richard FitzRalph, Archbiship of Armagh (1347-1360), the strenuous antagonist of the Mendi- cant Orders ; John Wycliffe, the reformer, who was Master of the College in 1360; Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother to King Henry V., the second founder of the University Library ; \\ illiam Grey, Chancellor of the University, Bishop of Ely, and ' Lord Treasurer ; George Montagu, Archbishop of York, who was Chancellor of the University in 1453 when still in his twenty-second year, and who sig- nalised his installation by a banquet, of which the particulars are preserved, of unheard-of profusion ; and John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, no less famous as a collector of books than infamous by his cruelty as High Constable of England.
Of these William Grey stands in a peculiarly close relation with the College. He spent many years in study at Cologne and in Italy. In 1449 he settled in Rome, as proctor for King Henry VI., where he lived ' an honoured member of the learned society in the papal city, and continued to collect manuscripts and to have them transcribed and illuminated under his eyes, until he was recalled in 1454 to the Bishopric of Ely.' After his return to England, while he was not regardless of the affairs of State ' his paramount interest still lay in his books and his circle of scholars, himself credited with a knowledge not only of Greek but of Hebrew. It was his desire that his library should be preserved within the walls of his old College. One of its members, Robert Abdy, heartily co-operated with him, and the books— some two hundred in number, and including a printed copy of Josephus — were safely housed in a new building erected for the purpose, probablyjust before the Bishop's death in 1478. Many of the codices were unhappily destroyed during the reign of King Edward the Sixth, and by Wood's time few of the miniatures in the remaining volumes had escaped mutilation. But it is a good testimony to the loyal spirit in which the College kept the trust committed to them, that no less than a hundred and fifty-two of Grey's manuscripts are still in its possession.
' Part of the building in which the library was to find a home was already in existence. The ground- floor and perhaps the dining-hall (now the library reading-room) adjoining, are attributed to Thomas Chase, who had been Master from 1412 to 1423, and was Chancellor of the University from 1426 to 1430 ; ' but the upper part of the library was expressly built for the purpose of receiving Bishop Grey's books, and it was the work of Abdy, who as Fellow and then, from 1477 to 1494, as Master devoted himself, not without substantial aid from the Bishop, to the enlargement and adornment of the College buildings.
During the two centuries following the reign of King Edward the Third, the College had received little or no addition to its corporate endowments, though it had been largely helped by donations towards its buildings, and above all by the foundation of its precious library. The Fellowships were open without limitation of place of birth or bringing-up ; and in only a few was there a preference permitted in
