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 Balsham likewise under the rule of St. Augustine, and whose house had been founded in 1135 by Henry Frost, a Cambridge burgess (see, Annals of Cambridge, i. 25-55; and cf. , 138-9). Under these circumstances, there can be little doubt that the succession to the Ely bishopric of such a personage as the eminent Franciscan, the Doctor Illustris, would have been a very important if not a very welcome event for the university of Cambridge, as well, perhaps, as for the diocese at large; and the election of Hugh de Balsham accordingly possesses, even negatively, a certain significance. (The above account of the dispute and its issue is mainly collected from the Chronica Majora of, v. 589, 611, 619-20, 635-36, 662.)

Of matters concerning Hugh de Balsham's episcopal administration nothing very noteworthy is handed down to us. He certainly took no leading part in the great political struggle contemporary with the earlier years of his episcopate; but there is no reason for supposing that he sided against the leader of the barons, the friend of the great Franciscan teachers. On the contrary, we have the statement of Archbishop Parker (Acad. Hist. Cantab. appended to de Antiq. Britann. Eccl.) that Hugh de Balsham was one of those bishops who denounced the penalty of excommunication against violators of Magna Charta and of the forest statutes. It is improbable that he sought to effect any important improvements in the architecture of his beautiful cathedral, in emulation of the achievements in this direction of his last predecessor but one, Bishop Hugh Northwold. On the other hand, he seems to have been a zealous guardian of the rights of his see, and a liberal benefactor both to it and to the convent out of which it had grown, and to which he had himself so much reason to be attached. Soon after his return from Rome, in the year 1258, he recovered the right of hostelage in the Temple, formerly possessed by the bishops of Ely, from the master of the Knights Templars who had contested it. The power of the Templars was already on the wane, and Hugh Bigot, justiciary of England, condemned the bishop's opponent to heavy damages and costs (, 150). The estate in Holborn, on which the bishops of Ely afterwards fixed their London residence, was not acquired till the time of Hugh de Balsham's successor, Bishop John de Kirkeby. Bishop Hugh's acquisitions were nearer home. He purchased the manor of Tyd, which he annexed to the see: and in lieu of two churches (Wisbeach and Foxton) which had belonged to the see, and which he had appropriated to the convent, and of a third (Triplow) which he had assigned to his scholars in Cambridge, of whom mention will be made immediately, he purchased for his bishopric the patronage of three other churches (Bentham, 150). He augmented the revenues of the almoner of the convent by appropriating the rectory of Foxton to that officer (ib. 128). And we may be tempted to recognise the influence of comfortable Benedictine training as well as a considerate spirit in his obtaining (if it was he that obtained) the papal dispensation granted during his episcopate to the monks of Ely, which, in consideration of their cathedral church being situate on an eminence and exposed to cold and sharp winds, allowed them to wear caps suited to their order during service in church. On the other hand, he had a vigilant eye upon the indispensable accompaniments of episcopal authority, issuing in 1268 an order to his archdeacon to summon all parish priests to repair to the cathedral every Whitsuntide and to pay their pentecostals, and to exhort their parishioners to do the like, under pain of ecclesiastical censures {ib. 150). In 1275 we find him maintaining the rights of his see against the claims of (the dowager) Queen Eleanor, who was a benefactress of the university, to present to the mastership of St. John's Hospital at Cambridge (, Annals, i.).

But it is in the services rendered by this prelate to the university of Cambridge itself, where he laid the foundations of a system of academical life which has, in substance, endured for six centuries, that his title to fame consists. Apparently a man without commanding genius, and belonging to an order which was already thought to have degenerated from its greatness and usefulness, the Benedictine bishop became the father of the collegiate system of Cambridge, and at the same time the founder of a college which has honourably taken part in the activity and achievements of the university. A few words are necessary to show how Bishop Hugh de Balsham came to accomplish the act that has made his name memorable, and what precedents or examples were followed in the foundation of Peterhouse.

Various circumstances had contributed to hasten the growth of the two English universities in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, and to draw closer the relations between them and the university of Paris upon which they were modelled. At Paris not fewer than sixteen colleges are mentioned as founded in the thirteenth century (indeed two are placed as early as the twelfth), among which the most famous is that of