Today is the 700th anniversary of the foundation of Oriel College in Oxford. Oriel is my college, and I am very proud to be part of such a long tradition of scholarship and piety.
It was on this day in 1326 that King Edward II granted a charter to establish it as a new college to the small academic community established in late 1324 which he had taken over from its founder Adam de Brome, rector of St Mary’s church in the High, exactly three weeks earlier. One of the endowments he gave to the college was the rectory of Saint Mary’s, and so it became known as the House of Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, which is still its legal name. In the reign of King James I it gained the suffix of ‘commonly called Oriel College’.
I have sometimes observed that King Edward II’s sole enduring successful action as monarch was the foundation of Oriel. Our “memorable founder”, to quote the college prayer, had a singularly unhappy and unfortunate reign, but Oriel has now survived for seven centuries.
The effigy on his tomb in Gloucester Cathedral
Image: History Jar
It was the first Oxford college to be founded by a monarch, and was often referred to in the medieval period as King’s College or King’s Hall. Nine years earlier, the King had founded King’s Hall in Cambridge for the study of Civil Law, but that was merged in 1546 into King Henry VIII’s new creation of Trinity College. Oriel is, therefore, the oldest royal foundation with a continuous history in either of the ancient universities and the reigning monarch is The Visitor.
In 1326 there were only four existing colleges - University, Balliol, Merton and Exeter - all for graduates, alongside the undergraduate Halls - the solitary survivor being St Edmund Hall - and the friaries and the early Benedictine houses of study. Amongst the colleges Oriel might not be the first in order of foundation, but it was the first college to consistently refer to itself as a college, And therefore, might buy a stretch of terminology seen as the oldest college in the University.
Under the new establishment, the original founder, Adam de Brome, was constituted the first Provost, and spent the remainder of his life adding to the endowments of his new creation. These included the Hospital of St Bartholomew, or Bartlemas, east of Oxford, which served as a summer retreat or as a refuge from the plague, and eventually became, with its surviving medieval chapel, the college sports ground. He was, however, unsuccessful in attempting to seize for the college, the benefaction of the books of Bishop Cobham of Worcester, which went on to become the nucleus of the University Library, later the Bodleian.
Originally based in Tackley’s Inn facing the High, and which is still occupied in part by Oriel students, and establishing the old rectory house as St Mary’s Hall for undergraduates, and which in 1902 merged into Oriel and is buildings became St Mary’s or Third Quad it was not until 1329 that the new college acquired the adjacent house that gave its usual name. In that year its owner Master James of Spain, the illegitimate son of a brother of King Edward II’s mother Queen Eleanor of Castile, and a distinguished musical scholar, born in England, made over to the college the house called ‘La Oriole’. This was probably the largest private house in the town centre and arranged around a courtyard which lies under the early seventeenth century Front Quod.
Oriel has formed the lives and careers of many over the seven centuries - the great and the good, the not so great and the not so good, clergy, writers, philosophers and theologians, historians, Nobel Prize winners, VCs, eccentrics and humourists, two cardinals, some sinners, some martyrs and Saints.
What struck me as a member was its sense of community, created from a very diverse group of students - and Fellows - who melded together, and stood by one another. It was not a college that was just a one subject place, not just relentlessly hearty and sporty, not just abstrusely academic, but rather a community that was uniquely itself, a place to be a part of, to make friends, a place to belong.
When I used to show visitors around the college I used to conclude by saying that Oriel is not quite the oldest, not the largest, and indeed the second smallest, of the undergraduate colleges, not the wealthiest, but not the poorest, not necessarily the most successful academically, even if more often than not it is in rowing, but it is simply the best college.
The coat of arms of Oriel
Image: Oriel Alumni
Floreat Oriel!
