, almoner to king Edward II. is allowed to have shared the honour of founding
, 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.