The claim of University College to priority among Oxford colleges cannot be disputed, if the foundation of a college is to be dated from the earliest of the endowments afterwards appropriated to its support. It was in 1249 that William of Durham left by will a sum of 310 marks to the University of Oxford for the maintenance of ten or more Masters, being natives of the county of Durham, in lodgings to be provided at Oxford out of this fund. Two houses in School Street, Oxford, and one in High Street, were purchased by the University before 1263, and were probably occupied by students. There was, however, no royal charter of incorporation, no provision for corporate self-government, or for the succession of fellows, no organised society, no distribution of powers or definition of duties. In a word, the institution founded by William of Durham was not a college, but an exhibition-fund to be administered by the University. It was not until 1292 that this scattered body of exhibitioners was consolidated into ‘the Great Hall of the University,’ as it was then called, under statutes which are a very meagre copy of those issued nearly thirty years earlier by Walter de Merton, and which, unlike his, were imposed, not by the founder, but by the University itself. Meanwhile, at some time between 1263 and 1268, John Balliol, of Barnard Castle, father of John Balliol, king of Scotland, provided similar exhibitions for poor scholars at Oxford. His intention was completed by his wife, Dervorguilla, who collected the recipients of his bounty into a single building on the present site of the college, increased the endowments so that it might support a body of sixteen exhibitioners with a yearly stipend of twenty-seven marks apiece, and in 1282 issued statutes regulating the new foundation, but fully conceding the principle of self-government. [Sidenote: Foundation of Merton College] In the meantime Merton College had been founded on a far larger scale, and had received statutes which, viewed across the interval of six centuries, astonish us by their comprehensive wisdom and foresight. As an institution for the promotion of academical education under collegiate discipline but secular guidance, it was the expression of a conception entirely new in England, which deserves special consideration, inasmuch as it became the model of all other collegiate foundations, and determined the future constitution of both the English Universities. In this sense, Merton College is entitled to something more than precedence, for its founder was the real founder of the English college-system. [Sidenote: Merton College, Statutes of, 1274]