Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College (/ˈbeɪliəl/)[4] is a constituent college of the University of Oxford.[5] Founded in 1263 by John I de Balliol,[6] it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world.[7]
Balliol College
Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BJ
Balliol College
Collegium Balliolensis
1263
Dame Helen Ghosh
366 (2017–18)[2]
359[2]
£119.1 million (2018)[3]
Members of Balliol have been awarded 13 Nobel Prizes with 12 Laureates (the most of any Oxford college).[8][9] Balliol has educated four prime ministers of the United Kingdom (the second highest of any Oxford college), Harald V of Norway,[10] Empress Masako of Japan, President Richard von Weizsäcker of Germany, and Seretse Khama of Botswana. Balliol alumni also include the astronomer James Bradley, legal figures Lord Bingham and John Marshall Harlan II, geneticist Baruch Samuel Blumberg, writers Robert Southey, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Matthew Arnold, Graham Greene and Algernon Swinburne, historians R. H. Tawney, Christopher Hill and James H. Billington and philosophers J. L. Austin, T. H. Green, Derek Parfit, W. D. Ross, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams. Among the most famous students are economist Adam Smith,[11][12] the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith Shoghi Effendi, the biologist Julian Huxley and his brother Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World.[13]
History[edit]
Foundation and origins[edit]
Balliol College was founded in about 1263 by John I de Balliol under the guidance of Walter of Kirkham, the Bishop of Durham.[14] According to legend, the founder had abducted the bishop as part of a land dispute and as a penance he was publicly beaten by the bishop and had to support a group of scholars at Oxford.[15] After de Balliol's death in 1268, his widow, Dervorguilla of Galloway (their son and grandson each became Kings of Scotland), made arrangements to ensure the permanence of the college in that she provided capital and in 1282 formulated the college statutes, documents that survive to this day.
Balliol lays claim to being the oldest Oxford college, though this is disputed by both University College and Merton. Balliol's claim is that a house of scholars was established by the founder in Oxford in around 1263, in contrast to Merton, which was the first college to be granted an official statute in 1274, and University College, which, while provisionally founded by will in 1249, was only officially established around 1280. However, Balliol also acknowledges that the other two have legitimate claims on their respective bases, depending on what criteria are used to define the oldest.[16][17]
New Inn Hall[edit]
Under a statute of 1881, New Inn Hall, one of the remaining medieval halls, was merged into Balliol College in 1887.[18] Balliol acquired New Inn Hall's admissions and other records for 1831–1887[19] as well as the library of New Inn Hall, which largely contained 18th-century law books.[18] The New Inn Hall site was later sold and is now part of St Peter's College, Oxford.
The Masque of Balliol[edit]
In 1880, seven mischievous Balliol undergraduates published The Masque of B-ll--l, a broadsheet of forty quatrains making light of their superiors – the master and selected fellows, scholars, and commoners – and themselves. The outraged authorities immediately suppressed the collection, and only a few copies survived, three of which found their way into the college library over the years, and one into the Bodleian Library. Verses of this form are now known as Balliol rhymes.
The best known of these rhymes is the one on Benjamin Jowett. This has been widely quoted and reprinted in virtually every book about Jowett and about Balliol ever since.
Oxford Internet Institute[edit]
Balliol College, and its previous Master Andrew Graham, played a major role in 2000–01 in setting up the Oxford Internet Institute. This was the first multidisciplinary research and policy centre in a European university devoted to examining the impact of the Internet on society. It is a department within the Social Sciences Division of Oxford University, but is physically located within the grounds of Balliol, and its previous Director (William H. Dutton) was a Professorial Fellow of Balliol.