No More Learning

And,
if monks provided or salaried the first Oxford teachers, they wholly
failed to obtain, or, at any rate, to retain, control over the rising
university; there is not the slightest trace of monastic influence
in the organisation or studies of the earliest Oxford of historic
times. The cloister school of St Frideswide may well have
charged the atmosphere with the first odour of learning ; but
its walls at no time sheltered the university soul.
Certain, however, it is that, in the first half of the twelfth
century, a number of famous names are connected with Oxford
teaching. It may be that if, as Gervase of Canterbury testifies,
Vacarius taught civil law at Oxford, in 1149, he did not lecture as
an Oxford master, but as a member of the train of archbishop
Theobald. But Theobaldus Stampensis, as a recent historiand has
pointed out, in letters written between 1101 and 1117 styles
· Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, II, 333.


## p. 342 (#360) ############################################

342
English Education
himself master in Oxford; Robert Pullen, afterwards cardinal and
the author of Sententiarum Libri Octo, is stated, on good authority,
to have taught in Oxford in 1133; and, when in 1189 Giraldus
Cambrensis read his Topographia Hibernica at Oxford, 'where the
nost learned and famous of the clergy of England were then to be
found,' he entertained ‘all the doctors of the several faculties and
such of their pupils as were of greater fame and repute. '
In the story of this last incident we have clear indications
of an existing and of an organised Oxford university.
Modern research points to the year 1167 as the date of the birth
of Oxford as a studium generale, and offers a chain of circum-
stantial evidence to connect it with an expulsion of alien students
by the Parisian authorities and the contemporary recall by
Henry II, then engaged in the contest with Becket, of all clerks
holding English cures? However this may have been, the last few
years of the twelfth century furnish abundant proof of the presence
in Oxford of students in considerable numbers.
In 1192, Oxford, according to Robert of Devizes, could barely
maintain her clerks. In 1197, the great abbot Samson of Bury
entertained a large company of Oxford masters. When the
troubles of 1209 burst upon the university, scholars to the
number-according to Matthew Paris-of three thousand dis-
persed in various directions.
It is to this last occasion that the Oxford historian” refers the
appearance of Cambridge as a studium generale.
The story is characteristic of the times. An Oxford clerk kills
a woman-accidentally, as it is afterwards said. But the culprit
flees. The town authorities search the dwelling wherein he
lodged, and, in his absence, arrest two or three of his companions,
who are perfectly innocent of the offence, if such it be. King John,
however, is in the middle of his famous quarrel with the pope, and
is ready to wreak his vengeance on any clerk. On the king's
instructions, the innocent prisoners are hanged. In combined
fear and indignation, the Oxford masters proclaim a suspension
of studies; and the scholars scatter. Some merely retreat to
Reading; others migrate further afield. Some go to Paris; some
to Cambridge.
Cambridge, as a town, dates back to the days of the Roman
occupation of Britain, when it represented the intersection of two
great military highways and a consequent guard-post. William I
made it his base for attack upon Ely, and pulled down eighteen of
1 Rashdall, Chap. XII.
3 Ibid. a, 349,
2


## p. 343 (#361) ############################################

Beginnings of Oxford and Cambridge 343
its 387 dwelling-houses to secure a site for a castle which should
command the passage of its important ford. Henry I erected it
into a borough corporate. The establishment of a great fair at
Barnwell about 1103 and the settlement of Jews in 1106 denote a
growth of trade and population. At what date students first found
their way to its narrow streets, and what was the attractive force
compelling them thither, it is, as in the case of Oxford, impossible,
absolutely, to determine. Cambridge, like Oxford, was not a
cathedral city; and the wealthy priory of Barnwell, founded about
1112, lay well away from the district in which the students congre-
gated. A story of early lectures by a party of monks despatched
by Joffred, abbot of Crowland, to his manor of Cottenham is, by
internal evidence, demonstrated to be a late invention. It is
not until the first quarter of the thirteenth century that genuine
history records the presence in Cambridge of a concourse of
clerks; it is in 1231, when the Parisian scholars were returning
to their former quarters after the famous secession of 1229, that
we obtain our first clear proof of the existence in the English
fen town of an organised society of masters and students. In
that year (3 May) a royal writ commands the sheriff of the county
to proclaim and, if need be, take and imprison certain pre-
tended clerks in Cambridge qui sub nullius magistri scholarum
sunt disciplina et tuitione ; he is to expel within fifteen days
any clerk who is not under the control of a responsible master.
At the same time, a second writ addressed to the mayor and
bailiffs recites that Satis constat vobis quod apud villam nostram
Cantebr. studendi causa e diversis partibus tam cismarinis quam
transmarinis scholarium confluit multitudo, and enjoins that the
hostel rents chargeable to scholars shall be fixed secundum con-
suetudinem Universitatis by two masters and two good and lawful
men of the town.
The Oxford suspendium clericorum of 1209 had at least
reinforced the numbers of the Cambridge scholars. In 1229, a
riot in Paris led to a similar migration of students from the
metropolitan university. Henry III issued an invitation to the
migrants to come over into England, and settle 'in what cities,
boroughs and villages they pleased to choose'; and Cambridge
shared with Oxford in the benefits of the Parisian exodus.
Henceforward, Oxford and Cambridge advance on parallel lines,
Oxford enjoying the advantage of a start of fifty years.
The Oxford suspendium came to an end in 1214 under the
terms of a settlement arranged by the papal legate, Nicholas


## p. 344 (#362) ############################################

344
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of Tusculum. A legatine ordinance subjected to penance the
executioners of the unfortunate victims of 1209 and, in true
medieval fashion, imposed a heavy mulct upon the townsmen,
present and future. It further required that a clerk arrested by
townsmen should be forthwith surrendered on the demand of
the bishop of Lincoln, or the archdeacon or his official, or 'the
chancellor or whomsoever the bishop of Lincoln shall depute to the
office. ' And the rents of halls were to be taxed by a joint board
of four burghers and four clerks. Here we have the record of the
beginnings of a privileged academic society. The first task of
an infant university is, necessarily, the organisation of its consti-
tution. That work was begun in Oxford before 1214. In a very
real sense the university of Oxford was a 'republic of letters. '
The Oxford constitution, as it reveals itself in the course of the
thirteenth century, is, essentially, democratic. The centre of its
organic life is the assembly of masters. For the distribution of
her members into four nations, as at Paris, Oxford substituted a
division into northerners and southerners; Scottish students
combined with English north countrymen to form the boreales,
whilst Welshmen, ‘Marchmen’ and Irishmen were ranked with the
australes. The two proctors were the elected mouthpieces of the
two divisions. The supreme legislative authority was the entire body
of masters of all faculties assembled in the great congregation';
where the proctors brought forward proposed statutes, counted
the votes and announced decisions. A ‘lesser congregation' of
regents, i. e. of actually teaching masters, of all faculties, passed
graces affecting studies or dealt with minor finance; while a
yet narrower assembly of regents in arts supervised the grant of
the magisterial licence to teach, and elected the proctors for the
year.
The titular head of the university was the chancellor. It was
round this officer that the struggle for university liberties was
destined to be waged.
The first antagonists of the scholars were the townsmen.
Grasping burgher householders demanded unconscionable rents
or cheated the students in the sale of supplies; mayor and bailiffs
asserted an eager jurisdiction over peccant clerks. The scholars
had recourse to the ecclesiastical arm; and the legatine ordinance
of 1214 marks their first decisive victory. In the taxors of hostels
they obtained their tribunes against exaction, and, in the chan-
cellor 'or whomsoever the bishop of Lincoln shall depute to the
office,' they secured a resident protector against arbitrary arrest.


## p. 345 (#363) ############################################

Town and Gown
345
The chancellor was, in 1214, apparently, not, as yet, a regularly
appointed officer. Grosseteste, who, at a subsequent date, exer-
cised the functions of the office, was, in style, merely rector
scholarum. When the chancellor appears as the occupant of
a permanent office, it is as the bishop's officer. He was chosen,
indeed, from amongst the masters; but it was the bishop who
appointed. He was, in fact, an ecclesiastical official, who wielded
the weapon of the church's censure, whether for the needful
discipline of the scholars or for their protection against the venom
of the town.
Supported by king and bishop, the chancellor secured, step by
step, his position in and against the town. By successive royal
writs he obtained the confirmation of the system of conjoint
taxation of lodgings; the expulsion of irregular clerks; and the
use of the town prison and of the castle cells for the confinement
of his domestic recalcitrants. By a series of charters he secured
the limitation of the interest chargeable by Jews on the debts
of scholars; his own right of jurisdiction in actions of debt in
which one party was a clerk; and the right to take part in the
assize of bread and beer. In 1255, he laid the foundation of
a more extensive jurisdiction over laymen. In 1275, a royal writ
gave him cognisance of all personal actions wherein either party
was a scholar. When, in 1288, a royal bailiff engaged in altercation
with the chancellor, the indiscreet layman lost his office. In
1290, the jurisdiction of the chancellor was defined by parlia-
ment as covering all crimes committed in Oxford when one of
the parties was a scholar, except pleas of homicide and mayhem.
The ranks of privileged persons included, with clerks proper, their
attendants (familias), and all writers, parchment-makers, illumi-
nators, stationers and other craftsmen who were employed exclu-
sively by scholars.
In the struggles for these liberties the university employed
the weapon forged by the Roman plebs of old. Between 1260
and 1264, seceding masters formed a studium at Northampton,
and, at a later date (1334), a similar concourse at Stamford
threatened the well-being of Oxford.
On St Scholastica's Day 1354, a tavern brawl between innkeeper
and dissatisfied customers gave rise to a fierce three days' 'town
and gown,' wherein countrymen from the outskirts reinforced the
1 So late as the first quarter of the nineteenth century every candidate for an
Oxford degree was required to take an oath not to lecture at Stamford. Rashdall, 11,
398.


## p. 346 (#364) ############################################

346
English Education
-
burghers. The chancellor was shot at; inns and halls were
looted; scholars were slain; books were destroyed. The friars,
coming forth in solemn procession to play the part of peace-
makers, were maltreated. The scholars of Merton alone were able
to resist a siege, thanks to the strength of their walls.
But the blood of scholars became the seed of fresh university
privileges. The university declared a general suspension of studies,
and the town was put under interdict. A royal commission made
short work of its task. Mayor and bailiffs were imprisoned; the
sheriff was dismissed; an annual penance was imposed on the
burghers; and the chancellor's prerogative was increased by the
transfer to him of no inconsiderable share of the local government.
Yet once more, in 1405, the university, in amplification of a
charter of Richard II, secured the right of trial before its own
steward of a privileged person indicted for felony. The victory
over the town was now complete.
At Cambridge, in like fashion, although without the accompani-
ment of serious bloodshed, the university developed its constitution;
and a long series of royal writs and parliamentary enactments
fortified the chancellor against the burghers. A great riot in 1318–
the year of Tyler's insurrection—when the townsmen sacked Bene't
College and burnt charters and title-deeds, was the Cambridge
St Scholastica’s Day. The privileges of the Cambridge chancellor,
though ample and, to the town, sufficiently galling, fell short of the
fulness of those of his Oxonian fellow-officials; and the Cambridge
constitution differed in some details from the Oxford model
Meanwhile, bishop's officer as he was in origin, the chancellor, in
Cambridge, as in Oxford, had, with the episcopal countenance, first
shaken himself free from the control of other episcopal officials; and
then, in alliance with the archbishop and with the pope, successfully
challenged the authority of the diocesan himself. The contest
against minor ecclesiastical officials is best illustrated by the award
issued in 1276 by bishop Hugo de Balsham in the dispute between
the archdeacon of Ely and the Cambridge scholars, who had denied
the jurisdiction of the archidiaconal court, and in a contemporary
discussion between the Cambridge chancellor and the 'Master of
Glomery,' in whom we may recognise the master of local grammar
schools, who was a nominee of the archdeacon. The award is
conceived in the spirit at once of liberal policy and of strict
justice. He adjudges that all disputes in which a 'glomerel’ is
defendant shall be decided by the Magister Glomeriae; he thus
enjoying the same privilege as that possessed by the other masters,
1


## p. 347 (#365) ############################################

University and Bishop
347
of deciding the suits in which his students were involved. But this
minor jurisdiction shall not extend (1) to the taxation of houses, or
(2) to serious offences calling for imprisonment or expulsion from
the university; in which cases the chancellor shall adjudicate.
A scholar plaintiff may appeal to the chancellor from the decision
of the Magister Glomeriae; but in disputes between two glomerels
the chancellor shall have no right of intervention, except in
the two above cited cases. Persons doing services exclusively for
scholars shall enjoy the privileges of scholars, and shall rank
as exempt from the control of the archdeacon. Rectors, vicars,
parish chaplains and others in the service of local churches
shall be held subject to the archdeacon; but clergy residing in
Cambridge merely for the purposes of study shall be exempt.
Hugo concludes by approving and confirming a statute issued
by the chancellor and masters which provides
that no one should receive a scholar who has not had a fixed master within
thirteen days after the said scholar had entered the university, or who had
not taken care that his name had been within the time aforesaid inserted in
the matriculation book of his master, unless the master's absence or legitimate
occupation should have prevented the samel.
It may be that the equity of this decision and the consequent
absence of local friction helped to preserve from attack for a long
period that jurisdiction of the bishop himself, which Hugo clearly
reserved. Moreover, Hugo himself was the founder of Peterhouse,
the oldest Cambridge college ; he, and a long line of his successors
as diocesans, not only took an enlightened interest in the well-being
of the scholars, but were enrolled among their most conspicuous
benefactors; and the propinquity of Cambridge to Ely gave little
opportunity for the unnoted nursing of rebellious projects. Certain
it is that the bishop of Ely continued to exercise a regular juris-
diction over the university down to the date of the Barnwell
Process in 1430. And then the chancellor, John Holbroke, master
of Peterhouse, and his advisers turned against their diocesan and,
at the same time, against his metropolitan, the engine of the
framers of the forged decretals. They submitted to the papal
arbitrators at Barnwell Priory, and secured a favourable verdict
on, a bull of Honorius I and a like asserted document of Sergius I,
which declared the exemption of the university of Cambridge
from all archiepiscopal, episcopal or other ecclesiastical control.
Henceforward, the university was not only a regularly recog-
nised and organised body, orderly, legislative and possessed of
1 Trans, in Mullinger, Vol. 1, p. 226.


## p. 348 (#366) ############################################

348
English Education
peculiar powers--in a word, a privileged corporation ; but it
was independent of other control than that of king, parliament
and pope.
Oxford reached the same end gradually and more rapidly.
Lincoln was far removed from the university town. Between the
university and bishop Grosseteste, a former rector scholarum
and an enthusiastic patron of learning, the relations were of the
most friendly order; but under his immediate successor disputes
began. Prolonged vacancies in the see assisted the scholars in
the establishment of their independence. The position of the
bishop was, indirectly, sapped by the successive royal amplifications
of the rights of the chancellor in the town. In 1280, the privileges
of the chancellor were strongly asserted against bishop Oliver
Sutton, the grant of probates of scholars' wills being, inter alia,
claimed. The contention was boldly put forward that, even in
spiritual matters, the jurisdiction of the diocesan was only 'in
defect of the chancellor,' or by way of appeal in the last resort
(in defectu cancellarii et universitatis). In a provincial synod,
Oliver's episcopal brethren, with their metropolitan, were induced
to side with the university against his lordship of Lincoln. In
future, an appeal was to run from the chancellor's court to the
regent congregation; thence, finally, to the great congregation.
In 1350, an application to the pope resulted in the reduction to
a mere formality of the episcopal confirmation of the Oxford chan-
cellor, and, in 1368, its necessity was, by the same authority, entirely
abrogated. In 1395, a bull of Boniface IX exempted the university
from the jurisdiction of all archbishops, bishops and ordinaries,
and, when, in 1411, archbishop Arundel, in pursuit of his anti-
Lollard crusade, attempted a visitation of Oxford, St Mary's was
fortified against him, and swarms of armed scholars compelled his
retreat. In this instance, the university acted with more legality
than discretion. The king took up the cause of his offended
kinsman; the chancellor and proctors were summoned to London
and compelled to resign; and, when the university decreed a cessa-
tion and boldly re-elected the deposed officers, pope John XXIII
ruined the defences of the scholars by revoking the bull of
Boniface, Parliament confirmed their defeat by a declaration
of the archbishop's right of visitation. It was not until 1479, after
the extirpation of Lollardism, that, by means of a bull of Sixtus IV,
the university recovered the lost ground. Meanwhile, the scholars
had learned a lesson in policy; the chancellorship was erected into
a permanent office and conferred upon a powerful court prelate or


## p. 349 (#367) ############################################

The Coming of the Friars
349
noble; a vice-chancellor annually nominated by the chancellor
assumed the functions of the resident head.
The peace of both universities was, from time to time, disturbed
by serious domestic broils. Irish students raised commotions; the
struggles of north and south well-nigh assumed the proportions
of petty civil wars, and called for the interference of the king.
Disputes, more interesting from the educational standpoint, were
excited by the presence of monks and friars. When the successive
barbarian irruptions burst upon western Europe, learning had taken
refuge in the monasteries. It might have been anticipated that,
on the return of brighter days, scholarship would emerge with the
Benedictines. Within limits this, indeed, had been the case. The
Benedictines never lost their love of letters, and their schools were
long and deservedly in high repute. The Benedictine monasteries
and the episcopal schools together preserved the useful arts of
writing, illuminating and music, and in the Latin tongue held the
avenue to ancient stores of knowledge. But the Benedictine
scheme of education was directed exclusively to the requirements
of the religious life. The Benedictines had their schools in
Oxford and Cambridge before the rise of the two universities;
but it was not until after the coming of the mendicants' that
they were roused to play an active part in English university life.
In 1217, within two years after the foundation of their order,
the Dominicans planted a settlement in Paris; in 1221 they
invaded Oxford; and in 1274 they were in Cambridge. They
were followed at Oxford in 1224 by the Franciscans, who, at the
same time, appeared in Cambridge. Entering in the guise of
mendicants, they speedily became possessed of valuable property,
and, within fifty years of their first appearance, their magnificent
buildings were the envy of the scholars of both universities.
Carmelites, Augustinians and White Canons imitated the example
of the Black and the Grey Friars, and their convents lined the
streets of the two university towns. Franciscans and Dominicans
alike fung themselves with enthusiasm into university life.
In the first quarter of the twelfth century Irnerius, the father
1 Already, in 1278, the Benedictine priory of Durham had begun to despatch clerks
to study in Oxford; and, before the end of the thirteenth century, the site of Durham
Hall was acquired. The Benedictines of St Peter's at Gloucester established in 1283
at Oxford a Hall for the accommodation of thirteen students of their order; and,
eight years later, the numbers of the students of Gloucester Hall were increased by a
combined effort of other southern Benedictine convents. In 1334, a Bull of Benedict
XII required that each Benedictine society should send up one monk in twenty witb a
fixed allowance to pursue higher studies in some university.


## p. 350 (#368) ############################################

350
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of the glossators, had laid the foundations of the fame of Bologna
as a school of civil law. Accursius had emulated him at Florence.
Vacarius, attempting to follow the example at Oxford, was, thanks
to the jealousy of the canonists, silenced by Stephen. In 1144,
the Benedictine Gratian published at Rome the famous Decretum,
in which he provided the students of canon law with a Corpus
Juris worthy to rank with the Pandects of Justinian. At Oxford,
the opposition of the canonists to the civil law was soon exchanged
for ardent pursuit, and doctors graduated as utriusque juris.
Meanwhile (c. 1160) Peter Lombard, archbishop of Paris,
attempted to render to theologians the service which Gratian
had rendered to the canonists. Applying to such subjects
as the Trinity, free will, original sin, the sacraments, the resur-
rection of the dead and final judgment, the methods of a
strict dialectic, he developed a scientific theological system. His
Sententiae became the standard theological text-book of the
Middle Ages. The mendicants, invading the seats of Parisian
teachers, endeavoured to ally with Christian doctrine an Aristo-
telian philosophy which had trickled through the schools of
Jews and Saracens. They thus became the leading exponents of
scholasticism.
At Oxford, the Franciscans Duns Scotus and William of Ockham
emulated the fame won for the Dominicans at Paris by Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Grosseteste, before his elevation to
high office, lectured in the Oxonian Franciscan school, where he
had as pupil Adam Marsh, destined to be Hugo de Balsham's com-
petitor for the see of Ely. Friar Bungay became head of the
Franciscan convent in Cambridge, where Humphry Necton, a
Carmelite, took the D. D. degree in 1259. The glory of the Grey
Friars culminated in Roger Bacon (c. 121494). Skilled in all
the recognised studies of his age, he, in opposition to prevailing
ideas, though remaining a schoolman, pointed to the study of
languages and mathematics as affording the true basis for a sound
system of education, and incurred amongst his contemporaries and
succeeding generations the lasting suspicion of tampering with the
illegitimate by leading the way in the pursuit of natural science.
As a rule, the schoolmen did not amass knowledge, but trained
ability; the real value of their discussions lay in their development
of the art of expression, in the fostering of agility of thought and
subtle distinction : in a word, in the development of pure dialectical
skill. Logic
Logic was their contribution to the world's future.
Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford had 'unto logik longe y-go. '
a


## p. 351 (#369) ############################################

The Fall of the Friars
351
6
It was not their studies but their ambition which lost to the
mendicants the favour of the medieval universities. Starting as
assailants of the abuses of the older orders, within a very few years
they furnished to the world a still more striking spectacle of
moral degradation ; and the barefooted friars rivalled the Cister-
cians as pure epicureans.
I fond there freres, Alle the fouro ordres
Prechynge the peple, For profit of hemselves;
Glosed the gospel, As hem good liked;
For covertise of copes, Construwed it as thei wolde.
So Piers the Plowman, voicing the experience of the nation at large.
In the universities, whilst claiming the rights, the friars strove to
shirk the duties, of the non-professed scholar. 'It was their object
to create an imperium in imperio, and, while availing themselves
of these centres as fields of propagandism, they were really intent
on the creation of a rival if not of a hostile authority. ' A fierce
struggle ensued. Already, in 1300, the chancellor of Cambridge,
Stephen de Haselfield, as the outcome of a brawl, excommunicated
the friars, two of whom were expelled from the university. On
an appeal to the pope, the friars secured the honours of the field;
but the university authorities returned to the fray. In 1336, a
university statute forbade the friars to admit into their orders
any scholar under 18. Two years later, a similar statute was passed
in Oxford. In 1359, the Cambridge houses enacted that two
members of the same convent of mendicants should not incept in
the same year. An appeal to parliament went in their favour, and,
in 1375, the friars actually obtained a papal bull dispensing, in
their case, with the statutory requirement of actual regency in
arts before the assumption of the degree of D. D. The mendicants
in both universities had outstayed their welcome a full century
before Chaucer launched at them the shafts of his humour, the
Piers Plowman poems lashed them with invective, or Wyclif,
himself a distinguished schoolman, poured forth on them the
vials of his vituperation. In the foundations of both Walter de
Merton and Hugo de Balsham, admission into a religious order was
expressly declared incompatible with membership of a college
society. With these two names and with the rise of colleges we
reach a new stage in English university history.
How was the throng of medieval scholars maintained ? Many
of the students could and did support themselves. The lecturers
were for generations maintained by the collectae of their auditors.
The fees levied for graces, the dues collected from the principals


## p. 352 (#370) ############################################

352
English Education
of halls and keepers of acts and various academic contributions
and fines, all predicate a paying clientèle. Not infrequently, as
it would seem, a wealthy scholar defrayed the charges of a
more needy companion. When the colleges began to admit
pensioners, these paid highly for their accommodation, and
in proportion to their rank. Henry Beaufort at Peterhouse, in
1388—9, paid the sum of twenty shillings as pensio camerae,
while a humbler contemporary paid 68. 8d.
There were scholars
in both universities who ruffled it after the manner of courtiers;
who affected lovelocks, red hosen and long shoes; who wore rings
‘for vain glorying and jettyng, pernicious example and scandal of
others'; and otherwise in their attire came within the compass of
the sumptuary provincial constitution issued by archbishop Strat-
ford in 1342. But Chaucer's typical clerk was of another mould.
The bulk of the students who thronged the streets of the medieval
university were, undoubtedly, poor. Many were reduced to strange
shifts for daily bread. The bursar's accounts of Peterhouse in
the early fifteenth century show poor scholars engaged in digging
the foundations of buildings, in carrying earth and bricks and
in other unskilled labour. The sizars of the following and many
succeeding centuries were regularly employed in menial tasks.
Favourite medieval stories introduce us to poor students begging
on the highways or singing from door to door. The relief of such
was always ranked as a peculiarly meritorious field for medieval
philanthropy. Noble personages and prelates supported poor
scholars in the universities. Edward II maintained 32 boys under
their master at Cambridge ; and his example was followed by his
successor, who erected for his pensioners a special hall of residence,
the King's Hall. Wealthy religious houses defrayed the charges
of selected students of their orders. Benefactors, even before the
college era, endowed loan-chests from which temporary advances
could be made on security to hard-pressed scholars. Yet more
deserving of university gratitude were the founders of 'exhibitions. '
William de Kilkenny, ninth bishop of Ely, dying in 1256—7,
bequeathed 200 marks to the priory of Barnwell in trust for the
payment of 10 marks annually to two priests studying divinity in
Cambridge. This was the earliest foundation of the type in the
junior university. William of Durham, archbishop-elect of Rouen,
had, seven years earlier, bequeathed to the university of Oxford
310 marks, to be invested for the maintenance of ten or more
masters of arts studying theology.
An all-important step forward was taken by Walter de Merton.


## p. 353 (#371) ############################################

Walter de Merton and Hugo de Balsham 353
a
Scholars not belonging to any religious order had hitherto, neces-
sarily, either lodged with townsmen or in some specially hired
hostel or inn. Of these last, there were many in both universities.
Fuller records the names of thirty-four in Cambridge, several of
which were still standing in his day, although with an altered
character. Oxford claims a far larger number. These halls were
managed by principals recognised by, and usually, though not
necessarily, masters of, the university. Some of them were con-
nected with special faculties, as law, divinity, or the arts. But
they were mere residential inns, neither chartered nor endowed.
In 1263 or 1264, Walter de Merton founded 'the House of the
Scholars of Merton' at Malden, in Surrey, linking it with a com-
pany of scholars resident in Oxford, and there supported on the
produce of the Malden estate. A few years later, the warden was
transferred from Malden to the direct charge of the Oxford group,
and, in 1274, under revised statutes, the college of Merton started
on its long and brilliant history as a permanently settled, chartered
and endowed foundation,
In 1280, Hugo de Balsham, tenth bishop of Ely, imitated in
Cambridge the example of Walter de Merton by planting a settle-
ment of 'studious scholars' among the brethren of the hospital
of St John; in 1284, the severance of the scholars from the
brethren gave rise to the establishment of Peterhouse, the oldest
of Cambridge colleges.
The college, it must be noted, was something more than a hall. In
the hall, with its officially fixed rental, students of all degrees found
some protection against the arbitrary exactions of the townsmen.
They were subjected to certain disciplinary regulations. They paid
for their accommodation. The college, on the other hand, was,
in origin, the endowed home of a limited number of students of a
particular class. Further, the college was not a monastery. It
had a rule, which borrowed something from the principles which
experience had approved in the orders; but it was not monastic.
On the contrary, it was anti-monastic: the scholars of Walter de
Merton and Hugo de Balsham were directly prepared for service
in the world as men of affairs. Finally, the college was not, in the
first instance, a profit-making school. Its doors were not open to
all seekers after knowledge. Its scholars were members of a close
corporation, living on a common stock, men of approved ability
pursuing advanced studies under discipline. The disturbing guest
and the would be perendinant were, alike, repelled.
This conception comes out clearly in the statutes of Merton
a
E. L. II.
CH, XV.
23


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354
English Education
and in the earliest Peterhouse statutes, which were avowedly
based upon the Merton rule. The Peterhouse society was to
consist of fifteen scholars, one of whom was, as the master, to be
the business head. A candidate for a vacancy in the body must
be vir honestus, castus, pacificus, humilis et modestus (quatenus
humana fragilitas nostra sinit) et indigens, ac in arte dialectica
Baccalaureus. The field of study for the scholars was determined
as including the arts, the philosophy of Aristotle and theology.
The majority of the scholars must always be engaged in the diligent
pursuit of the liberal arts; only with the express sanction of the
whole body were certain designated fellows to proceed to the
reading of theology. Two, but not more at the same time, might
study the canon or the civil law, one, the medical art. Each
fellow must follow a regular academic course, must prepare him-
self by hearing lectures, reading and discussion, for a career of
activity. The aim of the founder was not the endowment of a
life of learned ease; his revenues were intended, it was clearly
stated, for scholars actualiter studentes et proficere volentes.
The college conception took rapid root. Before the year 1400,
there had arisen in Cambridge six of the present colleges, with
Michaelhouse (1324) and King's Hall (1332), which, later, were
absorbed in Henry VIII's stately foundation, Trinity ; in Oxford,
the college of Merton had rivals in six of the existing colleges,
besides Gloucester Hall (now Worcester), which was erected by
the aroused Benedictines for students selected by their order,
and the dissolved Canterbury Hall.
The foundation of several of these societies is directly traceable
to the Black Death (1349). Oxford was half-depopulated, whether
by the actual ravages of the plague or by the flight of the students.
Cambridge, likewise, suffered terribly. Vast numbers of the country
clergy were swept off. It was, partly, at least, with a view to
recruiting the depleted ranks of his diocesan staff with well-
equipped scholars that bishop Bateman founded Trinity Hall,
Cambridge (1350), as a college of canonists and civilians, and, in a
more catholic spirit, completed the labours of Edmund Gonville on
a neighbouring site. About the same time and, seemingly, in the
same spirit, Elizabeth de Burgh, countess of Clare, enlarged the
earlier establishment (1326) of University Hall, and the guild
brothers of Corpus Christi founded Bene't or Corpus Christi
College (1352). The generous founder of New College, Oxford,
referred to the repairs of the devastation wrought by the plague
as one of his inciting motives.


## p. 355 (#373) ############################################

The Beginnings of the Colleges 355
The attention of the pious benefactor, who, in centuries past,
would have endowed a convent, was now drawn rather to the
university, and that with the direct encouragement of at least
the secular clergy. So Mary de St Paul founded in Cambridge,
in 1347, the college of Mary de Valentia, commonly called
Pembroke Hall; and Exeter, Oriel and Queen's arose in Oxford
beside the first period group, composed of Merton, University
and Balliol.
The statutes of these various societies set out particular objects,
and differed, accordingly, in minor detail; but, in all cases, the
main purpose was the same, and there was no vastly significant
departure from the primitive model.
The old hostels had sheltered, and continued for some time
to send forth, famous men; but Oxford and Cambridge scholarship
associated itself rapidly with the newer colleges. Merton claims,
not only Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, who were drawn away
by the friars, but also Richard FitzRalph and bishop Bradwardine,
the latter of whom is ranked by Chaucer with Augustine and
Boethius. Wyclif is variously connected with Merton, Balliol and
Canterbury Hall. The great clerical statesmen of fourteenth and
fifteenth century England can be mostly identified with the uni-
versities and with colleges. If William of Wykeham was no
trained scholar, and John Alcock was, possibly, nurtured in a hostel,
no men were more alive than they to the advantages of college
life. Henry Beaufort studied both at Peterhouse and in Oxford.
William Waynflete, who was master of Wykeham's school at
Winchester, provost of Henry VI's foundation at Eton and
Beaufort's successor as bishop, was, if not himself an Oxonian,
destined to rival both his distinguished patrons, episcopal and
royal, by his fine college of Magdalen.
In the first instance, the college was but the chartered and
endowed house of a small society of scolares or socii, pursuing
advanced studies in a large university. Walter de Merton, indeed,
from the very first, provided for certain parvuli, seemingly his
kinsmen, who, under the care of a grammar master, were to be
prepared for entry on a course in arts ; in most, if not in all, of
the early foundations the door was opened to poor students, who,
in return for menial services, were supported on the superabundance
of the victuals furnished by the founder's bounty, and assisted in
the pursuit of learning. But neither Walter de Merton nor
Hugo de Balsham can be supposed to have contemplated the
extension which was, ere long, given to the initial conception of
23-2


## p. 356 (#374) ############################################

356
English Education
the college by the admission, in constantly increasing numbers, of
the class of undergraduate pensioners. Still less can they have
looked forward to the day when colleges should dominate the
university.
Development is, however, the necessary condition of all true
life. Already, before the end of the fourteenth century, many of
the old inns had become annexed to colleges. It was then decreed
that no scholar should henceforth presume, on pain of expulsion, to
dwell elsewhere in the university town than in a hall or hostel.
This meant the disappearance of unattached students. By the
middle of the fifteenth century, the system of admitting commensals
had become established alike in the poorer and in the more wealthy
foundations; and, when that step was reached, the English univer-
sities were on their way to that strange confusion and distinction
of college and university which is the puzzle of the continental
observer.
To William of Wykeham is due a fresh extension of the
educational conception of both university and college.
Throughout England, in all the chief towns, were to be found
grammar schools, attached to convent or to cathedral, where boys
were instructed in the rudiments of learning. Many of these
schools were, probably, established in and around Oxford and
Cambridge. In Cambridge, the local schools seem, as was noted
above, to have been under the rule of a Magister Glomeriae, who,
as a nominee of the archdeacon, attempted, for a time, to hold his
own against the chancellor. The pupils of the grammar master
were mere children. While still juveniles, they were wont to secure
admission to the university.
William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, the favoured
chancellor of Edward III, whose personal literary acquirements
papal supporters and the holy father himself had not hesitated
to call in question, was inspired to establish in Oxford a college
which should outrival the most splendid foundation of the univer-
sity of Paris. In 1379, he obtained a royal licence for the execution
of his project; and, in 1386, after some years of building, the warden
and society entered into possession of the magnificent erection of
'Seint Marie College of Wynchester in Oxenford. '
The 'New College' was conceived on grand lines, alike in its
architecture and in the numbers and life of its students. It
combined the features of a society of learning with those of a
collegiate church. A warden and seventy 'poor indigent scholars,
clerks' composed the academic society, and were assigned to the
6


## p. 357 (#375) ############################################

William of Wykeham and Henry VI 357
usual studies of philosophy, theology and canon and civil law,
with a slight intermixture of medicine and astronomy. Ten
priests, three stipendiary clerks and sixteen choristers were
designated for the conduct of Divine service in the chapel,
which was a conspicuous feature of Wykeham's design. All
members of the society were to proceed to priest's orders
within a limited time. The allowances for the maintenance of
the scholars and the upkeep of the college were fixed upon a
most generous scale.
Had William of Wykeham proceeded no further, he would have
enhanced that reputation as an architect which had won him
royal approval and consequent wealth, and would have gained the
name of a munificent patron of letters and of Oxford. He took,
however, the forward step which marks the man of genius. He
conceived the idea of linking his college with a particular pre-
paratory institution, and, by the creation of 'Seint Marie College
at Winchester,' became the founder of the first great English
public school.
The school, already in existence in 1373, but settled, finally, in
buildings erected between 1387 and 1393, reproduced the features of
Wykebam's college. There were the warden and the seventy poor
scholars, and there were the ten priest fellows, three priest chap-
lains, three clerks and sixteen choristers. But, whereas the instruc-
tion of the junior members of the society was, at New College,
entrusted to specially salaried senior fellows, the teaching of the
scholars of Winchester was assigned to a school master and an
under-master or usher. And the studies of Winchester were
confined to grammar alone. From the ranks of the Winchester
.
scholars were to be filled up vacancies in the numbers of the
scholars of New College as they occurred, each nominated scholar
passing a two years' probation in the university before his final
admission.
It was as a direct imitator of Wykeham and copier of his
statutes that Henry VI, in 1440—1, founded the allied institutions
of King's College, Cambridge, and the College Roiall of oure
Ladie of Eton beside Windesor. Half the fellows and scholars
of Winchester were transferred to Eton to constitute the nucleus
of the royal school, of which William Waynflete, the Winchester
school master, became an early provost. The royal school at Eton,
rising under the shadow of the palace of Windsor and under
the eye of the court, became, henceforth, the school par excellence
of the sons and descendants of the English nobility. Whilst it


## p. 358 (#376) ############################################

358
English Education
owed much to the collegers who passed from its foundation
to the ranks of the fellows of King's, it owed still more in fame to
the wealthy oppidans, who crowded to share in its teaching. It
is not the least among the legacies of great men to the future
that they excite emulation. William Waynflete became the
founder of Magdalen (1448); archbishop Chicheley, a Wykehamist,
founded All Souls (1438).
In Cambridge, queen Margaret was stirred up by the labours
of her husband to lay the foundations of Queens' College (1448),
where her good work was preserved and completed by Elizabeth
Woodville (1465). Robert Woodlarke, third provost of King's
.
College and chancellor of the university, founded St Catharine's
(1473). John Alcock, bishop of Ely, who resembled Wykeham in
being at once skilled architect and prominent statesman, erected
Jesus College round the chapel of the dissolved priory of St
Radegund (1496). In Oxford, Richard Fleming, bishop of Lincoln,
having repented the Wyclifite errors of his youth, endowed Lincoln
College as a special bulwark against heresy in his diocese (1429).
When Thomas Wolsey, papal legate and archbishop, suppressed
monasteries in order to rival with his linked foundations of Cardinal
College and Ipswich the creations of Wykeham and Henry VI, men
might have foretold the coming of a peaceful church reform, Kings,
noble dames and princes of the blood now contended with prelates
and grateful scholars in college building. At Cambridge the Lady
Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII,
claimed the honours of foundress, not only of Christ's College
(1505), in which was merged Henry VI's grammar foundation of
God's House (1439), but of the larger college of St John (1511).
Thomas Lord Audley, chancellor of England, under licence obtained
from Henry VIII, completed, under the name of Magdalene, the
college of which the erection and endowment were begun by the
unfortunate Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham. It remained for
Henry VIII himself to combine Michaelhouse, Edward III's founda-
tion of King's Hall and an unendowed hostel in the magnificent
college of Trinity (1546). In the same England in which the
supporters of rival houses were wreaking mutual destruction on
the battle-fields of the Roses, men were thus actively engaged in
building colleges. It was fitting that in the monarch who united
the contending claims, and in his son, should be found active
patrons of the learning of the renascence.
What, we next ask, were the subjects and the courses of medieval
academic study ?


## p. 359 (#377) ############################################

Medieval Studies. The Grammar School 359
The early education of the generality of English youths in the
Middle Ages was found in a school attached to some cathedral
or convent. In the old grammar schools, reading, writing and
elementary Latin constituted, with singing, the subjects of instruc-
tion. The 'litel clergeon, seven yeer of age' of The Prioress's
.
Tale learned in school 'to singen and to rede, as smale children
doon in hir childhede. ' He had his primer. A school-fellow
translated and expounded for the enquiring child the Alma
redemptoris from the antiphoner of an older class. The prioress,
doubtless, here indicates the teaching of the conventual schools of
her day. Through Ave Maria and Psalms, learned by rote, the boy
passed to the rudiments of grammar, with Donatus and Alexander
de Villa Dei as guides, and Terence and Ovid as providers of
classic texts. Latin was the living language of all abodes of
learning, and to its acquisition, as such, were mainly directed the
efforts of all the old grammar schools. The same course was
pursued at Winchester and Eton. In the days of Elizabeth, boys
at the public schools were 'well entered in the knowledge of the
Latin and Greek tongues and rules of versifying. ' But, for William
of Wykeham and Henry VI, Greek was not as yet. William Paston,
in 1467, desiring to quit Eton, 'lacked nothing but versifying,'
and endeavoured to convince his brother of his acquirements by
some lame Latin lines. A little more skill in such versifying, some
knowledge of Terence, of Ovid and of Cicero's letters, with the
confidence derived from constant exercise in Latin conversation,
were the equipment with which his best furnished contemporaries
went up to the discussions of the university. The nature of the
studies which the young aspirants would, thenceforward, pursue
may be gathered from the oldest extant university statutes.
The studies of the medieval university were based upon the
trivium and quadrivium. Martianus Capella, a Carthaginian,
in an allegory de Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurië, written about
420 A. D. , introduces us, with the persons and descriptions of
the attendants of the earth-born bride of the god, to the seven
liberal arts. Three of these, grammar, logic and rhetoric, con-
stituted the trivium; which formed the course of study of the
medieval undergraduate. The bachelor passed on to the quad-
rivium-arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy-his conquest
of which was denoted by the licence or degree of master of arts.
To these seven arts, the thirteenth century added the three
philosophies---natural, moral and metaphysical.
An Oxford scheme of study of 1426 demands: one year's


## p. 360 (#378) ############################################

360
English Education
reading of grammar, with Priscian as text-book; next, three terms'
study of rhetoric, with Aristotle, Boethius and Tully as teachers,
reinforced by Ovid and Vergil; finally, three terms' reading of logic
with Boethius and Aristotle, Topica and Priora being expressly
enjoined. Of the subjects of the quadrivium, arithmetic and
music require each a year, while geometry and astronomy call
each for two. The three philosophies need each three terms.
Some of these courses were, seemingly, concurrent, the entire
arts curriculum covering, in general, eight years of three terms
each. The Cambridge requirements were, evidently, much the
same. Sir Robert Rede, in 1518, bequeathed £12 per annum for
the payment of three lecturers in logic, rhetoric and philosophy.
Of these three, one, whose style as lector Terentii reveals his
function, was assigned, by statute, to lecture to students of the
first and second year on 'books of humanity’; the second
lecturer read logic to third year undergraduates; the third
lectured to fourth year students and bachelors of arts on books
of philosophy.
The educational methods pursued differed in no small degree
from those at present in use. Of written examinations, the
medieval student knew nothing; his progress was secured by
compulsory reading of set books and enforced attendance on
assigned lectures; by frequent ‘posing' and debate; and, lastly,
by the necessity of himself delivering lectures after attaining
the baccalaureate. He might, indeed, content himself with
‘inception in grammar,' when, on the strength of the delivery
of certain discourses on Priscian and of the certificate of three
posing masters of his minor art, he passed forth qualified to
teach in an elementary school; but, if his ambition soared to
higher flights, he might assume obligations to his university
which represented labour continued during upwards of twenty
years.
The complete arts course was, in general, the necessary pre-
requisite to the study of theology; but students possessed of the
needful permission might pass directly from the trivium to the
pursuit of civil, and then of canon, law. In Oxford, as in Paris,
regents in arts asserted a claim to pre-eminence in the direction
of university reading. In 1252, it was enacted that no scholar
should receive the licence in theology, who had not previously
been regent in arts.
The Cambridge Statuta Antiqua set out regulations which
were in force about 1400 A. D. The five stages of the arts’ student's


## p. 361 (#379) ############################################

University Studies. The Higher Faculties 361
career, therein indicated, were successively represented by: ad-
mission to the question, by which, in his fifth year at earliest, after
previous attendance at scholastic discussion, he was introduced
for formal university testing; determination, a far more serious
ordeal, involving an active share in a long series of public dis-
putations and the duty of summing up in approved fashion the
results of debate; cursory lecturing on the Posteriora; inception,
whereby the scholar acquired the licence of master and was
regularly authorised to teach; and, lastly, regency, a period of
active lecturing ordinarie, as officially appointed instructor, and
of enforced attendance upon various public gatherings for
university business and ceremonial.
No scholar might incept in arts in Cambridge in the fifteenth
century unless : he had previously determined; had, for three
years at least, continuously resided and studied in his proper
faculty; had attended during three years the lectures of his own
master on Aristotle's philosophy, together with any such mathe-
matical lectures as might be given in the schools; had publicly
opposed and responded in his faculty in due form in the schools;
and, finally, unless he was provided with certificates de scientia
from five, and de credulitate vel scientia from other seven, masters
of arts.
Should he proceed, as, if ambitious of promotion, he must, to
the study of theology, of law or of medicine, the master of arts
must pass afresh through certain clearly defined stages:
None shall be admitted to incept in theology, unless he shall have pre-
viously been regent in arts; unless, also, he shall have heard theological
lectures for at least ten years in a university; item, he shall have heard
lectures on the Bible biblice for two years before he incepts; he shall have
lectured on or in some canonical book of the Bible for a year, for at least ten
days in each term; nor shall it be permitted to any to 'enter' the Bible before
the second year after the completion of his lectures on the Sentences; and he
shall have read all the books of the Sentences in that University, and shall
have remained at least three years in an approved University, after the
lecturing on the Sentences, before he shall be licensed. Furthermore, he shall
have preached publicly ad clerum and shall have publicly in all the schools of
his faculty opposed and responded after lecturing upon the Sentences, in such
sort that he may be in very deed of known and approved progress, manners
and learning according to the attestation de scientia by all the masters of
that faculty in the manner aforesaid; and, finally, he shall be admitted when
he has sworn that he has completed this set of requirements? .
Similar detailed provisions guarded the doctorates of canon
law, civil law and of medicine. The 'grace,' which, in later times,
1 Statuta Antiqua, 124; Camb. Doc. I, 377.


## p. 362 (#380) ############################################

362
English Education
6
became the necessary formality for proceeding to a degree, was, in
origin, a privilegium of the masters dispensing with some special
requirement in a particular case?
A comparison of the statutory requirements of the university
with the contents of a medieval college library would appear to
furnish a sufficient basis for judgment as to the extent of the
studies indicated.
Peterhouse is fortunate in still possessing, not only a library
catalogue of 1418, but the majority of the volumes therein
described. It is clear from its arrangement that, unlike the
noble collection vainly bequeathed by Richard of Bury to the
Benedictine house of Durham in Oxford, and the great library
of duke Humphrey of Gloucester, it was a working library.
Making allowances for entries on the roll inserted at a somewhat
later date, the collection of 1418 contains over 300 volumes. These
are divided into two classes, as being either chained in the
library' or 'distributed amongst the fellows. ' They are further
arranged under subject-headings as representing theology, natural
philosophy, metaphysics, moral philosophy, astronomy, ‘Alkenemie,'
‘Arsmetrice' (arithmetic), music, geometry, rhetoric, logic, grammar,
poetry, chronicles, medicine, civil law and canon law. Theological
works occupy the largest space. Canon law and civil law in com-
bination slightly exceed the three philosophies. Of medical
chained books there are fifteen; but, amongst the fellows, for
regular reading, logic, poetry and grammar are in greater request.
Astronomy is studied; though it is in the chained library where
Ptolemy reigns among a company of Arabians and their Jewish
translators, together with Bacon De multiplicatione specierum
cum perspectiva ejusdem and half a dozen recent table-makers,
closing with John Holbroke, who was elected master of the college
in the same year. Of the other subjects of the quadrivium,
music, arithmetic and geometry are, under their several proper
headings, denoted each by a single tome. A second copy of
Euclid, indeed, elsewhere appears, bound up with astronomical
works, as do two other treatises on geometry; and there are
two copies of the Arithmetica of Boethius; but the weakness of
the mathematical element is very marked, as compared with the
overwhelming force of the philosophy of Aristotle.
1 Friars, being prohibited by the rules of their orders from graduation in secular
branches of knowledge, required a dispensation to graduate in theology. The stringent
enforcement against them of university regulations provoked heated altercation and,
as already seen, led to parliamentary and papal interference: ante, p. 351; Rashdall,
11, 379.


## p. 363 (#381) ############################################

The Library of the Medieval Student 363
It is to be remembered that the fellows of Peterhouse
were at least bachelors of arts, whose main studies would be
concerned with cursory lecturing on Posteriora. Of thirteen
works on logic, which the library of 1418 contains, we find,
accordingly, eight distributed amongst the society. The eight
consist entirely of texts of Aristotle, including Posteriora,
Priora, Topica and Elenchi, with texts of Porphyry, various
commentaries and collections of questions on both Aristotle and
Porphyry and the Sophismata of William of Heytesbury (fellow of
Merton, 1330; chancellor of Oxford, 1371). In the chained library,
Boethius joins Porphyry and Aristotle, together with the Philo-
sophia of the great Albert, the Summa of Ockham and com-
mentaries of Kilwardby and St Thomas. A later fifteenth century
hand added to the catalogue the Summa of Peter Hispanus and
the Quaestiones of William Brito (ob. 1356). Under the several
headings of natural philosophy, moral philosophy and metaphysic,
the catalogue of 1418 records no fewer than eighteen volumes of
Aristotelian texts, together with commentaries by Averroes,
Aquinas, Egidius Romanus (ob.