Balliol College in Oxford

Balliol College, founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Among the college's alumni are three former prime ministers (H. H. Asquith, who once described Balliol men as possessing "the tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority", Harold Macmillan, and Edward Heath), five Nobel laureates, and a number of literary figures and philosophers. Political economist Adam Smith is perhaps the best known alumnus of the college.

Balliol College was founded in about 1263 by John I de Balliol under the guidance of the Bishop of Durham. After his death in 1268, his widow, Dervorguilla of Galloway (their son and grandson both became Kings of Scotland), made arrangements to ensure the permanence of the college in that she provided capital and in 1282 formulated the college statutes, documents that survive to this day.

Under a statute of 1881, New Inn Hall was merged into Balliol College in 1887. Balliol acquired New Inn Hall's admissions and other records for 1831–1887 as well as the library of New Inn Hall, which largely contained 18th-century law books