United States or Cambodia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In 1284 the first college was founded on an academic basis. This was Peterhouse. Its founder was Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, who had made the experiment of grafting secular scholars among the canons of St. John's Hospital, afterwards the college.
Bishop Balsham asked himself what could be done, and set himself to deal with the problems which presented themselves for solution in the condition of his own University. He was not a great man, that seems clear enough: his schemes were crude; he bungled.
This was the college of Spenser and Gray, the latter having migrated from the neighboring Peterhouse because of the practical jokes the students played upon him. It was also Pitt's college. Opposite Pembroke is Peterhouse, or St. Peter's College, the most ancient foundation in Cambridge, established by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, in 1284.
We held up to them all down the Willow Reach, and were just collaring them for the finish up to Balsham Weir, when the beasts pulled in and funked it." "And then, of course, we couldn't get back in time," said Lawkins. "We were jolly fagged weren't we, you fellows? and it was all a plant of those schoolhouse cads." "Fight you!" said Telson, menacingly. "Oh, beg pardon, old man, didn't mean.
PETERHOUSE. Taking the smaller colleges in the order of their founding, we come first of all to Peterhouse, already mentioned more than once in these pages on account of its antiquity, so that it is only necessary to recall the fact that Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded this the first regular college in 1284.
"The chancellor and masters" are first mentioned in a rescript of Bishop Balsham dated 1276, eight years before he founded Peterhouse, the first college, and six years before this Henry III. had addressed a letter to "the masters and scholars of Cambridge University," so that between these two dates it would appear that the chancellor really became the prime academic functionary.
Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, who survived him nine years, appears to have been moved with a desire to do for Cambridge what Merton had done for Oxford. Balsham is spoken of as the founder of St. Peter's College, and in one sense he was so. The bishops of Ely were the patrons of Cambridge.
Even Mede, though the author of Clavis Apocalyptica was steeped in the soulless clericalism of his age, could not support his brother-fellows without frequent retirements to Balsham, "being not willing to be joined with such company." Happily his father's circumstances were not such as to make a fellowship pecuniarily an object to the son.
Hugh de Balsham seems to have aimed at improving upon Merton's original idea. He meant well, doubtless; but his college of Peterhouse, the first college in Cambridge, was a very poor copy of the Oxford foundation. Merton was a man of genius, a man of ideas; Balsham was a man of the cloister. Moreover, he was by no means so rich as his predecessor, and he did not live to carry out his scheme.
Word Of The Day