ABSTRACT
Algernon Charles Swinburne’s involvement with Old Mortality was a turning point in his intellectual development. He matriculated at Balliol College on 24 January 1856, aged eighteen. Swinburne’s case came for a third time before the College authorities on 16 and 18 November after he failed his Classics Pass School: Commoner Swinburne, who had not satisfied the examiners in the School of Literae Humaniores, was reprimanded before the College, since this had evidently not happened without himself being greatly to blame. The Mastership of Balliol had been contested by Robert Scott and Benjamin Jowett, and Jowett had lost, for having too liberal a religious outlook. In January 1858 Swinburne moved out of Balliol and went to live at Rose’s, 10 Broad Street, a few minutes’ walk away. The circumstances surrounding Swinburne’s departure from Oxford in November 1859 have hitherto been unclear.
