could be accommodated in the then existing buildings of Balliol. According to the procuratorial cycle of 1629, Balliol ranks with University, Lincoln, Jesus, and Pembroke, among the smallest Colleges.[84] In recent times, taking years by chance, we find the number of Fellows, Scholars, and Commoners in the University Calendar for 1838 to be 102, in that for 1859 to be 122, in 1878 about 195, and in 1891 about 187.[85] That the College has been able to count so many resident members is partly owing to the extension of the College buildings, but much more to the modern Statute whereby all members of the College are not necessarily required to live within the College walls.
Notices of the domestic history of Balliol during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are surprisingly scanty. In the following pages we have gathered together such particulars as we have thought of sufficient interest to be recorded in a brief sketch like the present. Early in the seventeenth century the life of the College was varied by the presence of two Greek students, sent over by Cyril Lucaris, the Patriarch of Constantinople, to whom England owes the gift of the Codex Alexandrinus. One of these, Metrophanes Critopulos, became Patriarch of Alexandria. The other, Nathaniel Conopios, we are told “spake and wrote the genuine Greek (for which he was had in great Veneration in his Country), others using the vulgar only,” and was a proficient in music. He took the degree of B.D., and was made Bishop of Smyrna. Evelyn remarks that he was the first he “ever saw drink coffee, wch custom came not into England until 30 years after.”[86] Our next note is of a different character. Soon after the Scholars endowed by Tisdale[87] were established in Cesar’s lodgings, a dispute arose between one of them, named Crabtree, and Ferryman Moore, a freshman of three weeks’ standing. Crabtree called Moore an “undergraduate” and pulled his hair; whereupon Moore drew his knife and stabbed him so that he died. In the trial that followed Moore pleaded benefit of clergy and was condemned to burning in the hand, but at the petition of the Vice-Chancellor, Mayor, and other Justices, received the Royal pardon on the 19th November, 1624—the very year in which the benefaction that had brought his victim to Balliol was settled in its lasting home in Pembroke College.[88] A little later, in 1631, we find one Thorne, a member of Balliol, preaching at St. Mary’s against the King’s Declaration on Religion of 1628: he was expelled the University by Royal order.[89] The famous John Evelyn, who was admitted a Fellow Commoner of the College in May 1637, being then in his seventeenth year, tells us that “the Fellow Com’uners in Balliol were no more exempt from Exercise than the meanest scholars there, and my Father sent me thither to one Mr. George Bradshaw,” who was Master from 1648 to 1651. “I ever,” he adds, “thought my Tutor had parts enough, but as his ambition made him much suspected of ye College, so his grudge to Dr. Lawrence, the governor of it (whom he afterwards supplanted), tooke up so much of his tyme, that he seldom or never had the opportunity to discharge his duty to his scholars. This I perceiving, associated myself with one Mr. James Thicknesse, (then a young man of the Foundation, afterwards a Fellow of the House,) by whose learned and friendly conversation I received great advantage. At my first arrival, Dr. Parkhurst was Master; and after his discease, Dr. Lawrence, a chaplaine of his Ma’ties and Margaret Professor, succeeded, an acute and learned person; nor do I much reproach his severity, considering that the extraordinary remissenesse of discipline had (til his coming) much detracted from the reputation of that Colledg.” Later Evelyn mentions that his Tutor managed his expenses during his first year. In January 1640 “Came my Bro. Richard from schole to be my chamber-fellow at the University,” so that even Fellow Commoners did not always have rooms to themselves. It is noticeable that the chief studies which Evelyn speaks of engaging in are those of “the dauncing and vaulting Schole” and music; and one is not surprised to read that when he quitted Oxford in April 1640, without taking a degree, and made his residence in the Middle Temple, he should observe, “My being at the University, in regard of these avocations, was of very small benefit to me.”[90]
When King Charles was at Oxford, Balliol, with the great majority of Colleges, handed over its plate to him, 20 January 164⅔. The weight of the metal was only 41 lb. 4 oz., less than that of any other College recorded.[91] When the Parliamentary Visitation began in 1647. Thomas Lawrence was Master and also Margaret Professor of Divinity. After a while he submitted to the Visitors’ authority and then resigned his offices. In the Mastership he was succeeded by George Bradshaw, Evelyn’s tutor.[92] Apparently about half the members of the College in time made their submission.[93] From 1651 the Mastership was held by Henry Savage, a man of cultivation, who had travelled in France, and here at least deserves to be remembered as the author of the first and only history of his College, a work to which we have been constantly indebted for its transcripts and extracts from the muniments.[94] On his death in 1672 he was succeeded by Thomas Good—one of the first of those who submitted to the Parliamentary Visitors[95]—whom Wood describes as when resident in College “a frequent preacher, yet always esteemed an honest and harmless puritan.”[96] He is best known from the stories which Humphrey Prideaux tells about him. According to him the Master “is a good honest old tost, and understands business well enough, but is very often guilty of absurditys, which rendreth him contemptible to the yong men of the town.”[97] One of these stories he does “not well beleeve; but however you shall have it. There is over against Baliol College a dingy, horrid, scandalous alehouse, fit for none but draymen and tinkers and such as by goeing there have made themselves equally scandalous. Here the Baliol men continually ly, and by perpetuall bubbeing ad art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots. The head, beeing informed of this, called them togeather, and in a grave speech informed them of the mischiefs of that hellish liquor cald ale, that it destroyed both body and soul, and adviced them by noe means to have anything more to do with it; but on of them, not willing soe tamely to be preached out of his beloved liquor, made reply that the Vice-Chancelour’s men drank ale at the Split Crow,[98] and why should not they to? The old man, being nonplusd with this reply, immediately packeth away to the Vice-Chancelour,[99] and informed him of the ill example his fellows gave the rest of the town by drinkeing ale, and desired him to prohibit them for the future; but Bathurst, not likeing his proposall, being formerly and [sic] old lover of ale himselfe, answared him roughly, that there was noe hurt in ale, and that as long as his fellows did noe worse he would not disturb them, and soe turned the old man goeing; who, returneing to his colledge, calld his fellows again and told them he had been with the Vice-Chancelour, and that he told them there was noe hurt in ale; truely he thought there was, but now, beeing informed of the contrary, since the Vice-Chancelour gave his men leave to drinke ale, he would give them leave to; soe that now they may be sots by authority.”[100]
Another story of the same time connecting Balliol and Trinity Colleges is told of Dr. Bathurst, President of Trinity and the “Vice-Chancelour” named in the foregoing quotation. “A striking instance,” says Thomas Warton, “of zeal for his college, in the dotage of old age, is yet remembered. Balliol College had suffered so much in the outrages of the grand rebellion, that it remained almost in a state of desolation for some years after the restoration: a circumstance not to be suspected from its flourishing condition ever since. Dr. Bathurst was perhaps secretly pleased to see a neighbouring, and once rival society, reduced to this condition, while his own flourished beyond all others. Accordingly, one afternoon he was found in his garden, which then ran almost contiguous to the east side of Balliol-college, throwing stones at the windows with much satisfaction, as if happy to contribute his share in completing the appearance of its ruin.”[101]
Indeed, that Balliol was by no means in a state of prosperity after the Restoration may be gathered from the facts that it is described as possessing but half the income of Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s, and containing but twenty-five commoners;[102] and that in 1681 the College was taken by the opposition Peers for lodgings during the Oxford Parliament.[103] In January the Earl of Shaftesbury, together with the Duke of Monmouth, the Earls of Bedford and Essex, and twelve other Peers, subscribed a petition praying that the Parliament should sit not at Oxford but at Westminster; and when they found they could not move the King, Shaftesbury promptly set about securing rooms at Oxford. John Locke, who conducted negotiations for him, reported on the 6th February that the Rector of Exeter would be happy to place three rooms in his house at his Lordship’s disposal, “but that the whole college could by no means be had.” Dr. Wallis’s house was also inspected, and it was soon discovered that
