The churchyard, at all events, of St. Peter in the East, deserves a visit, lying as it does between the beautiful garden of New College and the picturesque buildings of St. Edmund Hall.

Before this last foundation is spoken of, a word must be said as to the road round which these three buildings are grouped—­Queen’s Lane.  It survives, almost unaltered, from Pre-Reformation Oxford, and, winding as it does its narrow way between high walls, it is an interesting specimen of the “lanes” which threaded mediaeval Oxford, a city in which the High Street and, to a smaller extent, Cornmarket Street were the only real thoroughfares; the rest of the city was a network of narrow ways.

But from the historic point of view, the most interesting part of the picture is its right side, where stand the buildings of St. Edmund Hall.  This is the only survival of the system of residence in the earliest University, of the Oxford which knew not the college system.

Before the days of “pious founders,” the students had to provide their own places of residence, and very early the custom grew up of their living together in “halls,” sometimes managed by a non-academic owner, but often under the superintendence of some resident Master of Arts, who was responsible, not for the teaching, but, at any rate in part, for the discipline of the inmates of his hall.  These halls had at first no endowments and no permanent existence; they depended for their continuity on the person of their head.  Gradually they became more organized; but when once the college system had been introduced, it tended, by its superior wealth and efficiency, to render the “halls” less and less important.  They lost even the one element of self-government which they had once had, the right of their members to elect their own Principal; this right was usurped by the Chancellor.  Hence, though five of the halls were surviving at the time of the University Commission (of 1850), all of them but St. Edmund Hall have now disappeared.

In theory, “hall” and “college” have much in common; one Cambridge college indeed has retained the name of “hall,” and two of the women’s colleges in Oxford have preferred to keep the old style.  In practice, their difference lies in the two facts that colleges are wealthier, with more endowments, and that they are self-governing, with Fellows who co-opt to vacancies in their own body and elect their head.  St. Edmund Hall has its head appointed by the fellows of Queen’s, with which institution it has long been connected.

 [Plate XXV.  St. Peter-in-the-East Church and St. Edmund Hall]