[4] Founded in 1350, it is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been established by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, to train clergymen in canon law after the Black Death.

The devastation caused by the Black Death in England of the 1340s included the loss of perhaps half of the population; Bishop Bateman himself lost nearly 700 of his parish priests, and so his decision to found a college was probably centred on a need to rebuild the priesthood.

After this, the college was granted usage of the nearby Church of St Edward, King and Martyr on Peas Hill, a connection which remains to this day.

The medieval structures remain unaltered, but with their façade altered to a more baroque style during the Mastership of Sir Nathaniel Lloyd in 1710-45.

[6] The Chapel was licensed in 1352 and was built by August 1366, when Blessed Pope Urban V granted the College permission to celebrate Holy Mass there.

The Dining Hall was rebuilt under Lloyd along similar lines to the Chapel, with rendered walls replaced by wainscotting and medieval beams by baroque carvings.

The new Jerwood Library overlooking the river was opened by Lord Howe of Aberavon in 1999, and stores the college's modern book collection.

In 2015, 10 students submitted formal complaints of verbal sexual harassment by Dr Peter Hutchinson, a college fellow.

Tortoise reported that the College's Master, Jeremy Morris, had been made aware of the allegations against O'Reilly, but had allowed him to continue teaching for a further five months and oversee the student disciplinary process until the complaints were investigated by police.

[13] In March 2020, the Governing Body authorised an immediate independent external inquiry into the College’s handling of all allegations raised and matters referred to in the Tortoise article, to be led by Gemma White QC.

[15] In September 2022 the College published White's report alongside a response document that indicated the actions it had taken to make improvements to the structures and culture of the institution.

Documents shown to the Financial Times showed how nearly half of O'Reilly's published article 'Fredrick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis, Orientalism, and the Austrian Militärgrenze' in a 2018 volume of the Journal of Austrian-American History had been plagiarised from the work of a third-year undergraduate.

O'Reilly remained in post but Penn State University Press, the journal's publisher, retracted the paper concerned saying that it presented "material without credit."

The Hesperides disbanded in 1976, but was re-founded in 2020 to encourage literary activity after the COVID-19 pandemic; speakers have included Trinity Hall alumni Nicholas Hytner and Sophie Winkleman.