V.— ORIEL COLLEGE.
By Charles L. Shadwell, Fellow, M.A., B.C.L., Bar.-at-Law.
OYAL patronage has played a less important part at Oxford than in the
sister University- The claim of King Alfred to the honour of founding
its oldest College is now abandoned everywhere except in the pious
traditions of the Creat Hall of the University. Even at Christ
Church, the undoubed creation of Henry the Eighth, there are to be
found many of his sons who prefer to connect themselves with the name
of Wolsey. Nowhere in Oxford are there foundations claiming Kings
and Queens as their nursing fathers and nursing mothers with as good
a right as the Colleges established at Cambridge by King Henry the
Sixth, by his Queen Margaret, by the Lady Maigaret, the mother of
the Tudor d\ nasty, and by her grandson. Edward the Second is
indeed the titular founder of the House of the Blessed Mary the
Virgin, in Oxford, commonly called Oriel College. But the true
honour is due to a humbler personage.
Oriel belongs to the earliest type of Oxford Colleges, that created by Walter de Merton. It was founded in 1325-6 by Royal Charter, at the suggestion of Adam de Brome, the King's Almoner. The foun- dation Statutes are taken mutatis mutandis from those of Merton College, the type to which the few other secular societies of earlier date were sooner or later assimilated. Oriel was modelled on Merton from the first, and only differed from its original in the slenderness of its endowments. A chief part of its scanty revenue was obtained by the impropriation of the Rectory of St. Mary's: and from this connexion it derived its earliest and for a long time its only true name, the House of the Scholars of St. Mary in Oxford. So also, its local habitation was at first to be no more than the parsonage house of the Rector : it did, indeed, move, very shortly after its foundation, into a somewhat larger mansion, la Oriole, in the adjoining parish of St. John the Baptist : and from this new residence it acquired its popular designation : but it was not equipped by its founder with new and stately buildings, such as those of Walter de Merton.
The body, founded by Adam de Brome consisted of a Provost and ten fellows only : the fellows were to be chosen after they had taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and were to carry on their studies to the higher faculties of Law, Civil and Canon, and Theology. Room may occasionally have been found for a few other inmates : a chaplain, a poor scholar or two, to read the Bible at meals and to wait on the Provost ; and a few students, noble or gentle, admitted to share the Fellows' table (commensales). Such were Thomas Arundel, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, in the fourteenth, and Thomas Cascoyne, in the fifteenth century. But it was not till a much later date that Oriel, or indeed any other Oxford College, became a common place of education for undergraduate students.
During the fourteenth century continuous though small additions were made to the College endowments, mainly by savings out of its scanty revenue. But the main part of the College possessions came to it during the period of one hundred years, 1425- 1525, a period marked also by exceptional eminence in the personal history of its members. John Carpenter, Walter Lyhert. and John Hals, successively Provosts, all became Bishops, as did also Richard Praty, and Richard Peacock, Fellows of the same generation. The principal estate of the College, the manors of Wadley and Littleworth in Berkshire, was purchased about 1445 °°t of the gift of John Frank, Master of the Rolls, aided by the contributions of Bishops Lyhert and Hals. Carpenter gave another considerable estate at Dene and Chalford in Oxfordshire. Somewhat later came the estate of Shenington, near Banbury, from William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, Visitor of the College. And in 1525, the manor of Swainswick, near Bath, was given by Richard Dudley, sometime Fellow, and Chancellor of the Church of Sarum. These
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