The Durham chronicler says that Hugh of Darlington (Prior of Durham 1258-72 and 1285-89) hated Richard of Houghton, who was a young man of grace, and therefore sent the monks to study at Oxford, “et eis satis laute impensas ministrabat.” Richard, sometime Prior of Lytham, may have been the “master of the novices”; he became Prior in 1289, and obtained leave to build on a site between Horsemonger Street or Canditch (Broad St.) and the King’s Highway of Beaumont (Park St.), already acquired from St. Frideswide’s, Godstow, and other grantors. Of the original buildings, presumably unmethodical in plan, some remains may survive in the lower part of the hall, and the adjoining buttery and bursary. A chapel was contemplated in 1326, but not erected till a century later; the present common-room may have been used as an oratory meanwhile. There was no endowment at first, but the Convent maintained six to ten monks as early as 1300; in 1309 they sent the second of two gifts or loans of books; a John of Beverley is called “Prior Oxoniae” in 1333. In a deed of 1338, Edward III. announces that, in fulfilment of a vow made at Halidon Hill to God and St. Margaret, he surrenders to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, the valuable rectory of Symondburne (the title to which they were then disputing) to endow a prior and twelve monks from Durham on the site in the suburbs of Oxford, with a church and lodgings to be erected at his expense; but this plan of endowment was never carried out. The Bishop, however, did not forget his project, and left to the College at his death the library, immense for the time, which his position as courtier, prelate, ambassador, and Chancellor had enabled him to amass, till he had more books, in his bedroom and elsewhere, “than all the bishops in England had then in their keeping.” His intention is recorded in the famous _Philobiblon_. It has been stated that the collection was sold by the Bishop’s executors to pay his debts; but besides indirect evidence, there is the statement of Dr. T. Cay (Master of University 1561) that he saw _in bibliotheca Aungervilliana_ a MS. of the treatise, supposed to be the autograph. The Library retains in its windows the arms of the older society and its benefactors, and effigies of the saints of the Order, etc.; but the books, with Bishop Langley’s _Augustine on the Psalms_ in three vols., and other additions, disappeared at the Reformation. They cannot be traced to Balliol or Duke Humphrey’s library; so perhaps they were among the purchases made by Archbishop Parker from Dr. G. Owen, or they may have been secured for the Durham Chapter by the first Dean and the first senior Canon, previously Prior of Durham and Warden of the College in Oxford respectively.