though quoted by Wood from the manuscript record." -~Ingram's
Memorials of Oxford~.

"There is a spot in the centre of the city where Alfred is said to
have lived, and which may be called the native place or river-head of
three separate societies still existing, University, Oriel, and
Brasenose. Brasenose claims his palace, Oriel his church, and
University his school or academy. Of these, Brasenose College is
still called in its formal style ' the King's Hall,' which is the
name by which Alfred himself, in his laws, calls his palace; and it
has its present singular name from a corruption of ~brasinium~, or
~brasin-huse~, as having been originally located in that part of the
royal mansion which was devoted to the then important accommodation
of a brew house." -~From a Review of Ingram's Memorials in the
British Critic~, vol. xxiv, p. 139.

"Brasen Nose Hall, as the Oxford antiquary has shewn, may be traced
as far back as the time of Henry III., about the middle of the
thirteenth century; and early in the succeeding reign, 6th Edward I.,
1278, it was known by the name of Brasen Nose Hall, which peculiar
name was undoubtedly owing, as the same author observes, to the
circumstance of a nose of brass affixed to the gate. It is presumed,
however, that this conspicuous appendage of the portal was not formed
of the mixed metal which the word now denotes, but the genuine
produce of the mine; as is the nose, or rather face, of a lion or
leopard still remaining at Stamford, which also gave name to the
edifice it adorned. And hence, when Henry VIII. debased the coin by
an alloy of ~copper~, it was a common remark or proverb, that
'Testons were gone to Oxford, to study in ~Brasen~ Nose.' "
-~Churton's Life of Bishop Smyth~, p. 227.