An account has already been given of the establishment of a house of studies at Oxford by the authorities of the chapter of the black monks of the province of Canterbury. The first tentative moves had issued, shortly before the end of the thirteenth century, in the occupation of an adequate area in Stockwell Street, on the site occupied by the original buildings of the present Worcester College. Owing directly to the circumstances of its origin Gloucester College, as it came to be called, was both in ownership and organization something of a patchwork. The abbot and community of Malmesbury were the ground landlords, and they also owned and occupied part of the building; the parts of the fabric common to all—chapel, hall and perhaps in time lecture rooms and library—had been erected and were maintained at the cost of the authorities of the provincial chapter, who had also secured an additional parcel of land; the apartments occupied by monks from the various houses were erected and maintained by the communities concerned. The head of the establishment was a prior, originally appointed by the abbot of Malmesbury; but the presidents appointed the regent master.

Gloucester College was not the only foothold of the black monks at Oxford. The northern province, which contained only four houses of any size, had made no attempt to set up a common house, but the great cathedral priory of Durham, which throughout the Middle Ages dominated the northern monastic scene, had begun to send monks to study at Oxford during the second priorate of Hugh of Darlington (1286/7–1289/90), the first purchase of land having been made in 1286.