BALLIOL (bal'yol) COLLEGE. One of the largest and most important colleges in the Uni versity of Oxford. Its original foundation is attributed to Sir .John de Balliol of Barnard Castle, Durham I father of the Balliol who con tested the crown of Scotland with Bruce), as an act of penance for injuries done to the churches of his neighborhood. Its first scholars were in residence between and 1266, in a hired house; but while Bailin] may claim, on the ground of the longest occupation of the same site and of priority in the benefaction to which it owes its inception, to be the oldest of the Oxford colleges, it was not. until twenty years later, a college in the modern sense of the word; it was originally, like the colleges of Paris at the same time, simply an association of students presided over by a principal of their own election. and (lid not become an endowed corporation with a permanent home until, in 1282, Devorguilla. wife of John de Balliol, com pleted the scheme and gave the college its first statutes. It was long comparatively unimpor tant. Although \Viclif became its master about 1360, it was for a while the home of the champions of the scholastic philosophy. In the Fifteenth Century it became 'the nursing mother of the early English humanists,' such men as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and John Tiptoft. Earl of Worcester, being num bered among its scholars. After this period of brilliance, Balliol was little heard of until the Nineteenth Century. when it came once more to the front. It was blessed with a succession of able masters, of whom the most famous was Benjamin Jowett ; it received many notable bene factions, particularly the Snell Exhibitions, which have attracted many brilliant Scotehmen, among them Adam Smith, Sir William Hamil ton, and J. G. Lockhart ; and, at the same time
that it set the example (with Oriel) of open ing its scholarships to general competition, it established a rigid standard of ability for its members, by requiring from them an addi tional entrance examination and obliging them to read for honors in the schools. The college eonsists of a water, 12 fellows, about 50 scholars and exhibitioners. and nearly 200 other undergraduates. Its buildings date from the library, part of which is as old as 1430, to the present ball, completed in 1877. It has a long list of distinguished graduates, particularly in the Nineteenth Century. Among poets and men of letters, it can boast of Southey. 1\latthew Arnold, Swinbnrne, Clough, Andrew Lang, and Calverley, besides having associated to itself Robert Browning as an honorary fellow. To the Oxford Alovement it contributed Cardinal Nanning and William George Ward; and, to the English Church, two of its primates, Tait and Temple. And more than one of the intel lectual and social movements specially character istic of the end of the Nineteenth Century owe their inspiration to T. H. Green, fellow of Balliol from 1860 and afterwards professor of moral philosophy.