aning applied to any union of persons, and _collegium_ was
the equivalent of [Greek: hetaireia]. In many respects, e.g. in the
distinction between the responsibilities and rights of the society and
those of individual members thereof, the collegium was what we should
now call a corporation (q.v.). Collegia might exist for purposes of
trade like the English gilds, or for religious purposes (e.g. the
college of augurs, of pontifices, &c.), or for political purposes, e.g.
_tribunorum plebis collegia_. By the Roman law a collegium must have at
least three members. The name is now usually applied to educational
corporations, such as the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, with which,
in the numerous English statutes relating to colleges, the colleges of
Winchester and Eton are usually associated. These colleges are in the
eye of the law eleemosynary corporations. In some of the earlier
statutes of Queen Elizabeth they are spoken of as having an
ecclesiastical character, but the doctrine of the common law since the
Reformation has been that they are purely lay corporations,
notwithstanding that most or all of their members may be persons in
priest's orders. This is said to have been settled by Dr Patrick's case
(_Raymond's Reports_, p. 101).

Colleges appear to have grown out of the voluntary association of
students and teachers at the university. According to some accounts
these must at one time have been numerous and flourishing beyond
anything we are now acquainted with. We are told, for example, of 300
halls or societies at Oxford, and 30,000 students. In early times there
seems to have been a strong desire to confine the scholars to certain
licensed houses beyond the influence of the townspeople. Men of wealth
and culture, and notably the political bishops and chancellors of
England, obtained charters from the crown for the incorporation of
societies of scholars, and these in time became exclusively the places
of abode for students attending the university. At the same time the
corporations thus founded were not necessarily attached to the locality
of the university. The early statutes of Merton College, for example,
allow the residence of the college to be shifted as occasion required;
and the foundations of Wolsey at Oxford and Ipswich seem to have been
the same in intention. In later times (until the introduction of
non-collegiate students) the university and the colleges became
coextensive; every member of the universi