Brom, Adam De

, almoner to king Edward II. is allowed to have shared the honour of founding Oriel college, Oxford, with that monarch. The only accounts we have of De Brom state, that he was rector of Hanworth in | Middlesex, in 1313; the year following, chancellor of the diocese of Durham; in 1319, archdeacon of Stow; and a few months after was promoted to the living of St. Mary, OxfordJ In 1324 he requested of his sovereign to be empowered to purchase a messuage in Oxford, where he might found, to the honour of the Virgin Mary, a college of scholars, governed by a rector of their own choosing, “sub nomine Rectoris Domus Scholarium Beatae Marias.” With this the king readily complied, and De Brom immediately commenced his undertaking by purchasing a tenement in St. Mary’s parish; and, by virtue of the charter granted by the king, dated 1324, founded a college of scholars for the study of divinity and logic. He then resigned the whole into the hands of the king, of whose liberality he appears to have made a just estimate, and from whose power he expected advantages to the society, which he was himself incapable of conferring. Nor was he disappointed in the issue of this well-timed policy. The king took the college under his own care, and the next year granted anew charter, appointing it to be a college for divinity and the canon-law, to be governed by a provost, and for their better maintenance, besides some tenements in St. Mary’s parish, he gave them the advowson of St. Mary’s church, &c. Adam de Brom, who was deservedly appointed the first provost, drew up a body of statutes in 1326, and gave his college the church of Aberforth in Yorkshire; and in 1327, Edward III. bestowed upon them a large messuage, situated partly in the parish of St. John Baptist, called La Oriole, to which the scholars soon removed, and from which the college took its name. De Brom procured other advantages for the college, the last of which was the advowson of Coleby in Lincolnshire. He died June 16, 1332, and was buried in St. Mary’s church, in a chapel still called after his name. It is said to have been built by him, and his tomb, now decayed, was visible in Antony Wood’s time. In this chapel the heads of houses assemble on Sundays, &c. previous to their taking their seats in the church. ¹