John Free, who graduated in 1450,[47] was a Fellow of Balliol College, and was afterwards a Doctor of Medicine of Padua. During a life spent in Italy he became famous as a poet and a Greek scholar, a civilist and a physician.[48] Pope Paul the Second made him Bishop of Bath and Wells, but he died almost immediately, in 1465.[49] Gunthorpe was his companion in study at Ferrara, and he too became distinguished as a scholar: but he was still more a collector of books, some of which he gave to Jesus College, Cambridge—at one time he was Warden of the King’s Hall in that University—while others came to several libraries at Oxford. Gunthorpe is best known as a man of affairs, a diplomatist and minister of state. He became Dean of Wells, and is still remembered in that city by the guns with which he adorned the Deanery he built.[50] He survived all his fellow-scholars we have named, and died in 1498.[51]
From the end of the middle ages down to the present century Balliol College presents none of those characteristics of distinction which we have remarked in the fifteenth century. During this time, indeed, although in the nature of things a large number of men of note continued to receive their education at Oxford, there was no College or Colleges which could be said to occupy anything like a position of peculiar eminence or dignity. In the general decline of learning, education, and manners, Balliol College appears even to have sunk below most of its rivals, and its annals show little more than a dreary record of lazy torpor and bad living.[52] The Statutes of the College received no alterations of importance. Its power to choose its own Visitor was indeed for a time overridden by the Bishop of Lincoln, who was considered ex officio Visitor until Bishop Barlow’s death in 1691;[53] and the Scholastici became distinguished as Scholares from an inferior rank of Servitores with which the Statutes of 1507 had identified them. Another lower class of students, called Batellers, also came into existence. Every Commoner was required by a rule of 1574 to be under the Master or one of the Fellows as his Tutor;[54] Scholars being apparently ipso facto subject to the Fellows who nominated them. In 1610 it was ordered, with the Visitor’s consent, that Fellow Commoners might be admitted to the College and be free from “public correction,” except in the case of scandalous offences; they were not bound to exhibit reverence to the Fellows in the quadrangle unless they encountered them face to face—reverentiam Sociis in quadrangulo consuetam non nisi in occursu praestent. Every such Commoner was bound to pay at least five pounds on admission for the purchase of plate or books for the College.[55] The sum was in 1691 raised to ten pounds.[56] As the disputations in hall tended to become less and less of a reality, and the lectures in the schools became a pure matter of routine for the younger Masters, provision had to be made for something in the way of regular lectures, but fixed tuition-fees were not yet invented, and so the richest living in the gift of the College—that of Fillingham in Lincolnshire, which had been usually held by the Master and was now attached to his office—was in 1571 charged with the payment of £8 13s..4d. to three Prelectors chosen by the College who should lecture in hall on Greek, dialectic, and rhetoric.[57] The lectures, it was soon after decided, were to be held at least thrice a week during term, except on Feast Days or when the lecturer was ill. Any one who failed to fulfil his duty—either in person or by a deputy—was to pay twopence to be consumed by the other Fellows at dinner or supper on the Sunday next following.[58] In 1695 the famous Dr. Busby, who had before shown himself a friend to the College,[59] established a Catechetical Lecture to be given on thirty prescribed subjects through the year, at which all members of the College were bound to be present.[60] This Lecture was maintained until recent years.
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, as we have seen, it had been largely helped by donations towards its buildings, and above all by the foundation of its precious library.[61] Between the date of the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the year 1677, in the renewed zeal for academical foundations which marked that period, the College received a number of new benefactions; and these introduced a new element into its composition. Hitherto all the Fellowships had been open without restriction of place of birth or education; and although it is likely that the College in its earlier days drew its recruits mainly from the north of England, yet there was nothing in the Statutes to authorize the connection. The College, it is true, was a very close corporation, for Fellow nominated Scholar, and out of the Scholars the Fellows were generally elected. Still, in contradistinction to the majority of Colleges, there were no local limitations upon eligibility to Scholarships. The new endowments, on the other hand, with the exception of those of the Lady Periam, were all so limited. First, by a bequest of Dr. John Bell, formerly Bishop of Worcester, two Scholarships confined to natives of his diocese were founded in 1559,[62] and in 1605 Sir William Dunch established another for the benefit of Abingdon School.[63] A little later Balliol nearly became possessed of the much larger endowment, of seven Fellowships and six Scholarships, attached to the same school by William Tisdale. Indeed part of the money was paid over, six Scholars were appointed, and Cesar’s lodgings—of which more hereafter—were bought for their reception.[64] But a subsequent arrangement diverted the endowment, which in 1624 helped to change the ancient Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College.[65] In the meanwhile a more considerable benefaction, also connected with a local school, accrued to Balliol between 1601 and 1615, when in execution of the will of Peter Blundell one Fellowship and one Scholarship were founded to be held by persons educated at Blundell’s Grammar School at Tiverton, and nominated by the Trustees of the School.[66] The next endowment in order of time was that of Elizabeth, widow of Chief Baron Periam and sister of Francis Bacon. The nomination to the Fellowship and two Scholarships which she founded in 1620, she reserved to herself for her lifetime; afterwards they were to be filled up in the same manner as the other Fellowships of the College.[67]
After the Restoration two separate benefactions set up that close connection between the College and Scotland which saved Balliol from sinking into utter obscurity in the century following, and which has since contributed to it a large share of its later fame. Bishop Warner of Rochester, who died in 1666, bequeathed to the College the annual sum of eighty pounds for the support of four scholars from Scotland to be chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Rochester; and about ten years later certain Exhibitions were founded by Mr. John Snell for persons nominated by Glasgow University. The latter varied in number according to the proceeds of Mr. Snell’s estate; at one time they were as many as ten and of the yearly value of £116, but their number and value have since been reduced. Both of these foundations were expressly designed to promote the interests of the Episcopal Church in Scotland.[68] Their importance in the history of the College cannot be overestimated, and it is to them that it owes such names among its members as Adam Smith, Sir William Hamilton, and Archbishop Tait, to say nothing of a great company of distinguished Scotsmen now living. The Exhibitioners have also as a rule offered an admirable example of frugal habits and hard work; and perhaps it was in consideration of their national thriftiness that the rooms assigned them are noticed in 1791 as mean and incommodious.[69]
Among more recent benefactions to the College the most important is that of Miss Hannah Brakenbury who, besides the questionable service of contributing towards the rebuilding of the front quadrangle, endowed eight Scholarships for the encouragement of the studies of Law and Modern History. Nor should we omit to mention the two Exhibitions of £100 a-year each, founded under the will of Richard Jenkyns, formerly Master, which are awarded by examination to members of the College, and the list of holders of which is of exceptional brilliancy. But in recent years the number of Scholarships and Exhibitions has been most of all increased not by means of any specific endowment but by savings from the annual internal income of the College. In pursuance of the ordinances of the Universities’ Commission of 1877, Balliol became the owner of New Inn Hall on the death of its late Principal; and the proceeds of the sale of the Hall, when effected, are to be applied to the establishment of Exhibitions for poor students.