Exemption from the authority of the ordinary legal or correctional
tribunals was one of the remarkable features of the ancient
universities, and the relics of it which have come down almost to the
present day in Scotland are very curious. The university was a state in
itself, where the administrators of the ordinary authority of the realm
had no more power than in a neighbouring independent republic. So
jealously was this authority watched and fenced, that usually when the
dispute lay between the liegemen of the university and those of the
State—between gown and town—the university haughtily arrogated the
authority over both. To be sure, it was very much the practice of the
age to adjust rights and privileges by balancing one against another—by
letting them fight out, as it were, every question in a general contest,
and produce a sort of rude justice by the antagonism and balance of
forces, just as in some Oriental states at this day the strangers of
each nation have the privilege of living under their native laws; a
method which, by pitting privilege against privilege, and letting the
stronger bear down the weaker, saves the central government much
disagreeable and difficult work in the adjustment of rights and duties.
So, in the middle ages, we had the ecclesiastical competing with the
baronial interests, and the burghal or corporate with both. Nay, in
these last there was a subdivision of interests, various corporations of
craftsmen being subject to the authority of their own syndics, deans, or
mayors, and entitled to free themselves from any interference in many of
their affairs by the burghal or even the royal courts. Ecclesiastical
law fought with civil law, and chancery carried on a ceaseless
undermining contest with common law; while over Europe there were
inexhaustible varieties of palatinates, margravates, regalities, and the
like, enjoying their own separate privileges and systems of
jurisprudence. But over this Babel of authorities, so complexly
established in France that Voltaire complained of changing laws as often
as he changed horses, what is conspicuous is the homage paid by all the
other exclusive privileges to those of the universities, and the
separation of these grand institutions by an impassable line of
venerated privileges from the rest of the vulgar world. Thus, the State
conceded freely to literature those high privileges for which the Church
in vain contended, from the slaughter of Becket to the fall of Wolsey.
In a very few only of the States nearest to the centre of spiritual
dominion, could an exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction extending to
matters both spiritual and temporal be asserted; and France, which
acknowledged the isolated authority of the universities, bade a stern
defiance to the claims of the priesthood.
It can hardly be said that, invested with these high powers, the
universities bore their honours meekly. Respected as they were, they
were felt to be invariably a serious element of turbulence, and a source
of instability to their respective governments. In the affairs of the
League, the Fronde, and the various other contests which, in former
days, as in the present, have kept up a perpetual succession of
conflicts in turbulent Paris, the position to be taken by the students
was extremely momentous, but was not easily to be calculated upon; for
these gentry imbibed a great amount both of restlessness and
capriciousness along with their cherished prerogatives. During the
centuries in which a common spirit pervaded the whole academic body, the
fame of a particular university, or of some celebrated teacher in it,
had a concentrating action over the whole civilised world, which drew a
certain proportion of the youth of all Europe towards the common vortex.
Hence, when we know that there were frequently assembled from one to ten
thousand young men, adventurous and high-spirited, contemptuous of the
condition of the ordinary citizen, and bound together by common objects
and high exclusive privileges—well armed, and in possession of edifices
fortified according to the method of the day—we hardly require to read
history to believe how formidable such bodies must have proved.
An incident in the history of a wandering Scotsman, though but a petty
affair in itself, illustrates the sort of feudal power possessed by the
authorities of a university. Thomas Dempster, the author of _Etruria
Regalis_, and of a work better known than esteemed in Scottish
Biography, in the course of his Continental wanderings found himself in
possession of power—as sub-principal, it has been said, of the college
of Beauvais, in the university of Paris. Taking umbrage at one of the
students for fighting a duel—one of the enjoyments of life which
Dempster desired to monopolise to himself—he caused the young
gentleman’s points to be untrussed, and proceeded to exercise discipline
in the primitive dorsal fashion. The aggrieved youth had powerful
relations, and an armed attack was made on the college to avenge his
insults. But Dempster armed his students and fortified the college walls
so effectively that he was enabled, not only to hold his post, but to
capture some of his assailants, and commit them as prisoners to the
belfry. It appears, however, that like many other bold actions this was
more immediately successful than strictly legal, and certain ugly
demonstrations in the court of the Chatelain suggested to Dempster the
necessity of retreating to some other establishment in the vast literary
republic of which he was a distinguished ornament—welcome wherever he
appeared. He had come of a race not much accustomed to fear consequences
or stand in awe of the opinion of society. His elder brother had, among
other ethical eccentricities—or, as they would now be justly deemed,
enormities—taken unto himself for wife his father’s cast-off mistress;
and when the venerable parent, old Dempster of Muiresk, intimated his
disapproval of the connection, he was fiercely attacked by a band of the
Gordon Highlanders, headed by his hopeful son. Defeated and put to
flight with some casualties, the heir hoisted the standard of an
independent adventurer in Orkney, where, setting fire to the bishop’s
palace, he rendered the surrounding atmosphere too hot for him. He made
his final exit in the Netherlands; and his conduct there must have been,
to say the least of it, questionable, since his affectionate brother,
whose conduct in Paris is the more immediate object of our notice,
records that his doom was to be torn to pieces by wild horses. In such a
family, flagellation would have little chance of being condemned as a
degrading punishment, inconsistent with the natural dignity of man.
Indeed, to admit the plain honest truth, the records of the Scottish
universities prove to us that this pristine discipline was inflicted on
its junior members; and it is especially assigned in Glasgow as the
appropriate punishment for carrying arms. Local peculiarities of costume
gave facilities for it in some instances, which were not so readily
afforded by the padded trunk-hose and countless ribbon-points of the
Parisian “swells” of Louis XIII.’s day. The Parisian aristocracy took
serious umbrage at the conduct of Dempster; and he had to take his vast
learning and his impracticable temper elsewhere.
This is a digression; but Thomas Dempster is a good type of those
Scotsmen who brought over to us, from their own energetic practice, the
observance of the Continental notions of the independence and power of
the universities. His experience was ample and varied. He imbibed a
tinge of the Anglican system at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Besides
serving and commanding in different colleges at Paris, he held office at
Louvain, Rome, Douay, Tournay, Navarre, Toulouse, Montpelier, Pisa, and
Bologna. A man who has performed important functions in all these places
may well be called a citizen of the world. At the same time, his
connections with them were generally of a kind not likely to pass from
the memory of those who came in contact with him. He was a sort of
roving Bentley, who, not contented with sitting down surrounded by the
hostility of nearly all the members of one university, went about like a
roaring lion, seeking whom he might attack and insult, and left behind
him wherever he went the open wounds of his sword, or of his scarcely
less direful pen, scattered thickly around him. He was one of those who,
as Anthony Arnaud said of himself, are to expect tranquillity only in a
removal from that sublunary world in which, like pieces of clockwork
wound up, they are doomed to a ceaseless motion during their vitality.
Thomas Dempster has many sins to answer for, and at this day the most
conspicuous of them is the cool impudence wherewith, in his _Historia
Literaria Gentis Scotorum_, he makes every man whose birthplace is not
notorious, and whose name gives any excuse for dubiety, a Scotsman—as,
for instance, Macrobius, who is claimed in virtue of his _Mac_, and in
forgetfulness that his is a Greek name, signifying long-lifed. Yet peace
to our countryman’s long dispersed ashes. He was a fine type of the
fervent, energetic, brave, enduring national character; and the
ungoverned waywardness of his career was an earnest of what his
countrymen might achieve when a better day should dawn upon their poor
distracted land.
But to return to the exclusive judicial authority of the universities,
and the relics of the system found in Scotland,—we do remember that on
the occasion of one of those great snowball _emeutes_, which at
intervals of years make the Edinburgh students frantic, the police had
entered the quadrangle of the College and captured some of their sacred
persons. The occurrence was improved on by the students of Aberdeen—then
in possession of an organ of no despicable ability, called the _Aberdeen
Magazine_—who maintained that their own academical edifices were sacred
from civic intrusion, and pointed the finger of scorn at their southern
brethren, who submitted without rebellion to invasion by a body of
glazed-hatted constables, under the leadership of a superintendent of
police. It was said, in retaliation, that the reason why the
universities of Aberdeen were exempt from the visitations of the police
was because there was no force of police constables in the northern
capital; and it was maintained that whenever they should make their
appearance there, they would pay no more respect to the precincts of the
university than to those of the old privileged religious houses—whose
boundaries, sacred some centuries ago from civic intrusion, are still
set forth in the title-deeds of burghal estates. We know not how the
matter may really stand, but we suspect that the broad-bonneted and
broad-shouldered gentry who now make so curiously conspicuous a police
in the streets of Aberdeen, are not sufficiently acquainted with the
privileges of Marischal College to pay them the due deference.
Still we do find curious practical relics of the privileges
of the universities. On the 19th of June 1509, a general
convocation—_congregatio generalis_—of the University of Glasgow was
held in the chapter-house of the cathedral—the now venerable University
edifices had not then been built. In that assembly solemn discussion was
held upon certain momentous matters, the first and most important of
which was a representation by the Chancellor and temporary Rector of the
University that the exclusive jurisdiction and adjudication of
causes—_jurisdictio_, _causarumque cognitio_—were falling into
desuetude, to the great prejudice of the University, and the no small
diminution of its valuable privileges. The next notice that one finds in
the _Records_ is a few years later—28th March 1522—but it is rather a
conflict between the privileges of two of the universities than between
the academic and the judicial authorities. In the general convocation of
the University, Peter Alderstoun is accused of having served a citation
from the Conservator of the Privileges (_Conservator Priviligiorum_) of
the University of St Andrews on a certain Mr Andrew Smyth—the
aristocratic spelling is older than we thought it had been in Scotland.
The breach of privilege was aggravated by its occurring in the
habitation of the Reverend David Kinghorn, Pensioner of Cross Raguel.
The bailiff, or whatever else he might be, pleaded ignorance of the
nature of the writ; but he was obliged, barehead, to seek pardon from
the injured party. We find nothing more bearing on the question of the
special university privileges, until, in the year 1670, a sudden and
singularly bold attempt appears to be made for their revival, a court of
justiciary being held by the University, and a student put on trial on a
charge of murder. The weighty matter is thus introduced:—
“Anent the indytment given in by John Cumming, wryter in Glasgow,
elected to be Procurator-Fiscal of the said University; and Andrew
Wright, cordoner in Glasgow, neirest of kin to umquhile Janet Wright,
servetrix to Patrick Wilson, younger, gairdner there, killed by the
shot of ane gun, or murdered within the said Patrick his
dwelling-house, upon the first day of August instant, against Robert
Bartoun, son lawful of John Bartoun, gairdner in the said burgh, and
student in the said University, for being guilty of the said horrible
crime upon the said umquhile Janet.”[135]
A jury was impannelled to try the question. The whole affair bears a
suspicious aspect of being preconcerted to enable the accused to plead
the benefit of acquittal; for no objection is taken on his part to the
competency of the singular tribunal before which he is to be tried for
his life; on the contrary, he highly approves of them as his judges, and
in the end is pronounced not guilty. The respectable burgesses who acted
as jurymen had, however, as it appears, their own grave doubts about
this assumption of the highest judicial functions; and we find them in
this curious little document, which we offer in full, expressing
themselves with that cautious and sagacious scepticism which is as much
a part of the national character as its ardour and enthusiasm.
“Patrick Bryce, chancellor, and remanent persons who passed upon the
said inquest, before they gave in their verdict to the said court,
desired that they might be secured for the future, lest they might be
quarrelled at any time hereafter for going on, and proceeding to pass
on an inquest of the like nature, upon ane warning by the officer of
the said University; and that in regard they declared the case to be
singular, never having occurred in the age of before to their
knowledge, and the rights and privileges of the University not being
produced to them to clear their privilege for holding of criminal
courts, and to sit and cognosce upon crimes of the like nature;
whereunto it was answered by the Rector and his assessors that they
opponed their being content to pass upon the said inquest _in initio_,
and their making faith without contraverting their privilege; but
notwithstanding thereof, for their satisfaction and _ex abundanti
gratia_, they declared themselves and their successors in office
enacted, bound, and obliged for their warrandice of all cost, skaith,
danger, and expenses they or ane or other of them should sustain or
incur through the passing upon the said inquest, or whilk could follow
thereupon, through the said University their wanting of their original
rights or writs for clearing to them the privilege and jurisdiction in
the like cases. Whereupon the said Patrick Bryce, as Chancellor, for
himself, and in name and in behalf of the haill remanent members of
the said inquest, asked acts of court.”[136]
Though we are not aware of any instance in Scotland where the academic
tribunals have arrogated, since the Reformation, so high a power, it is
not difficult to find other instances where exemption has been claimed,
even at a later period, from the ordinary powers that be. Thus the
_Glasgow Records_ of the year 1721 bear that—
“The faculty, being informed that some of the magistrates of Glasgow,
and particularly Bailie Robert Alexander, has examined two of the
members of the University—viz., William Clark and James Macaulay,
students in the Greek class—for certain crimes laid to their charge
some time upon the month of February last, and proceeded to sentence
against these students, contrary to and in prejudice of the University
and haill members, do therefore appoint Mr Gershom Carmichael, &c., to
repair to the said magistrates of Glasgow, and particularly Bailie
Alexander, and demand the cancelling of the said sentence, and protest
against the said practice of the said bailie or any of the magistrates
for their said practice, and for remeid of law as accords.”[137]
It was the principle, not the persons—the protection of their
privileges, not the impunity of their students—that instigated the
faculty on this occasion, since in their next minute they are found
visiting William Clark and James Macaulay with punishment for heavy
youthful offences. We offer no apology for quoting, on such an occasion,
these scraps from technical documents. It appears to us that when they
are not oppressively long, or too professional for ordinary
comprehension, there is no other way of affording so distinct a notion
of any very remarkable social peculiarity, such as we account the
exclusive liability of the members of universities to their own separate
tribunals to have been.
Although the Scottish universities never boasted of the vast concourse
of young men of all peoples, nations, and languages, which sometimes
flocked to the Continental schools, and thus with their great privileges
created a formidable _imperium in imperio_—yet naturally there has
existed more or less of a standing feud between the citizen class and
the student class. The records before us show repeated contests by the
authorities of universities, against an inveterate propensity in the
students to wear arms, and to use them. The weapons prohibited by the
laws of King’s College, Aberdeen, are so varied and peculiar that we
cannot venture to do their Latin names into English, and can only
derive, from the terms in which they are denounced, a general notion how
formidable a person a student putting the law at defiance must have
been. But for the difference in the Latinity, one might suppose himself
reading Strada’s celebrated account of the weapons in the Spanish
Armada.[138]
From some incidental causes, a slight tinge of the desperado habits,
indicated by such restrictions, lingered around the Scottish
universities, and perhaps was most loth to depart from that northernmost
institution to which the prohibitions specially applied. The main cause
of their continuance may be attributed to the exigencies of the
anatomical classes which gradually attached themselves to the schools of
medicine. In obtaining subjects there was a perpetual contest with
unmitigable prejudices; and as in the smaller university towns there
were few or no people who followed systematically the trade of the
resurrectionist, the students had to help themselves. It needed but the
very fact of their having an occasional “subject” in the dissecting-room
to expose them to an odious reputation, which no argument about the
blessed results of the healing art, and the necessity of studying it in
the structure of the human frame, could in the slightest degree
mitigate. The feud thus caused was of a kind which widened as the
progress of scientific acquirement enlarged the study of anatomy; and it
seemed as if a permanent and deadly hostility against the progress of an
essential science were daily deepening and widening, until public wrath,
concentrated and accumulated, might be expected at last to burst on the
devoted pursuit, and annihilate it. Though the students of anatomy were
generally among those who had passed through the ordinary curriculum of
studies, and no longer wore the distinguishing scarlet robe, yet their
younger brethren were, not entirely without cause, mixed up in their
misdeeds. Horrible stories of their waylaying children, and of their
clapping plasters on the mouths of grown men met in lonely byways, which
stopped the breath, and instantaneously extinguished life, were greedily
believed, and founded tales capable of superseding _Bluebeard_ and _The
One-handed Monk_ at the winter chimney-corner. Young lads in their early
blushing scarlet were sometimes savagely assaulted, as if the poor
innocents were ghouls in search of the horrible prey peculiar to their
order. The public frenzy reached its climax on the revelation of the
crimes of Burke and Hare. It almost as suddenly collapsed after the
passing of the Anatomy Act, which removed from dissection that odium
which previous legislation had factitiously imparted to it as part of
the punishment of murder, and accompanied the change with special
facilities for the obtainment of subjects. Hence more than twenty years
have passed since the habits of our students were tainted by this
incidental peculiarity, and its social effect must now be matter of
tradition.
It can easily, however, be believed that the revolting preliminary which
the votary of science had to undergo must have had an influence on his
habits very far from propitious. The nocturnal expedition was
occasionally joined by those who had not the excuse of scientific
ardour, and thus the influence of the practice spread beyond the limits
of the medical profession. The mysterious horrors surrounding the
reputation of such a pursuit were not without a certain fascination to
the young gownsmen, and some of them were supposed placidly to cultivate
rather than suppress charges which would have seriously alarmed their
more knowing and practical seniors. Though there was thus a good deal of
exaggeration and boasting both from without and from within, yet the
practice did exist among the senior students, while at the same time an
occasional junior, approved for his boldness and discretion, might be
admitted to act a subordinate part in a “resurrectionising affair.”
Possibly he, if not the others, might find it necessary to employ some
stimulant to brace his nerves for the formidable work in hand. Thus the
adventure which provided the theatre of anatomy with the means of
keeping a few students at hard work in one of the most important
departments of human knowledge, had probably occasioned more than one
night of fierce dissipation, and produced scenes which would have
considerably astonished the good old aunts, deprecating the exhausting
labours of their virtuous nephews in the nasty hospitals and that horrid
dissecting-room.
The excesses which concentrated themselves around this solemn and
cheerless pursuit, ramified themselves into others of a more fantastic
and cheerful character. Probably it is all changed now; but they are not
very old men who remember how the smaller university towns were subject
to fantastic superficial revolutions. Trees, gates, railings, street
lamps, summer-houses, shop signs, and other “accessories of the realty,”
as lawyers call them, disappearing or changing places like the shifting
of the side-slips in a theatre. Perhaps there may even be alive some who
have witnessed or participated in such divertisements. Is there any one
who will admit participation in that transmutation which scandalised the
bailie, by exhibiting his suburban mansion under the auspices of the
national achievement, as “licensed to sell spirits, porter, and ale,”
just at the moment when the licentiate of the Red Lion was lamenting the
disappearance of his insignia? Are none of those virtuous youths alive,
who called next day to express their horror of the deed, and hold
confidential communion with the bailie, thus obtaining access to his
arsenal, and receiving the comfortable secret information—valuable for
future conduct—that the blunderbuss, the musket, and the brace of
pistols, were loaded with powder only, “but he wad warrant the scounrels
wad get a fleg”? Who was it, we wonder, that, on the myrmidons of
justice coming to his chambers, under the well-warranted suspicion that
he possessed an extensive and varied collection of shop signs, had
recourse to his incipient Scripture knowledge by an apt quotation in
reference to those who seek what they do not succeed in obtaining? Is it
probable that in any private neuks in old dwelling-houses there may
exist relics of those prized museums not acquired without toil and
risk—and exhibited with much caution only to trusted friends—which
consisted mainly of watchmen’s rattles and battered lanterns? Lives
there yet one of that laborious group, who wished to illuminate the
mansion of Professor Blanc in proper style, and to that effect carried
out a cluster of street lamps, and planted them all alight in his
garden, so encountering labour and risk with no better reward than a
reflection on the professor’s puzzled countenance when he should awaken
and behold the phenomenon? _N.B._ Street lamps in those days were fed
with oil, and were supported on wooden posts, which it was not difficult
for a couple of strong youths to uproot.
But we are shocking the virtue and civilisation of the age by such
queries. They hint at practices which we believe to be entirely eschewed
by the superior class of young gentlemen who now frequent our
universities. If we have created a throb of terror in an amiable
parent’s breast, we humbly beg his pardon. He may take our word for it
that his hopeful son is incapable of such pranks. This is mainly an
antiquarian article, and the matter contained in it belongs more or less
to the past, and is founded on document or tradition.
The semi-monastic foundations by which the students live under the
discipline of colleges or halls, and assemble together at a common
table, are indissolubly connected in English notions with the idea of a
university. Yet the system arose as an adjunct to the original
universities, and, as late inquirers have shown, the parasites have so
overrun the parent stem that its original character is scarcely
perceptible beneath their more luxuriant growth. The origin of these
institutions is simple enough. When the great teachers brought crowds of
young men together from all parts of Europe, the primary question was
how they were to obtain food and shelter? and a second arose when these
needs were supplied—how could any portion of the discipline of the
parental home be administered to them among strangers? Certain
privileges were given to the houses inhabited by the students, and
streets and quarters sprung up for their accommodation, as we now see
the rows of red-tiled cottages sprout forth like lichens around the tall
chimney of a new manufactory. To prevent fluctuation, and preserve the
academic character wherever it had once established itself, it was a
frequent regulation that the houses once inhabited by students could be
let to no other person so long as the rents were duly paid. We find
traces of this expedient in the records of Glasgow, where there seems to
have been great difficulty in accommodating the students of the infant
university, on account of the extreme smallness of the town. Since the
house once occupied by the student was thenceforth dedicated to his
order, speculators were induced to build entirely with a view to the
accommodation of a certain number of young men living in celibacy, and
they naturally imitated the example set them in the construction of
monasteries. The edifice and its use thus suggested something like the
monastic discipline—and, indeed, an establishment filled with young men,
having their separate dormitories and common table, yet without any head
or system of discipline among them, would have been a social anomaly of
the most formidable character. The university required to give its
sanction to the well ordering of the separate institutions thus rising
around it. At the same time munificent patrons of learning left behind
them endowments for founding such institutions, indicating at the same
time the method in which the founders desired that they should be
governed, and appointing a portion of the funds to form stipendiary
allowances to office-bearers. So arose those great colleges and halls
which in England have buried the original constitution of the university
beneath them.
In the great Continental universities which contained separate colleges,
these were more strictly under the central control. In Scotland, the
wealth at the disposal of the academic institutions, and the numbers
attending them, were never sufficiently great to encourage the rise of
separate bodies, either independent or subordinate. The system of
monastic residence and a common table was adopted under the authority of
the university, but it is remarkable that while so many of the
fundamental features of the original institution have been preserved,
this subsidiary arrangement has totally disappeared. The indications of
its existence, however, as they are preserved in the records, have
naturally considerable interest as vestiges of a social condition which
has passed from the earth.
In the _Glasgow Records_ we have, of date 1606, a contract with Andrew
Henderson touching the Boarding of the Masters and Bursars, commencing
thus: “At Glasgow, the twenty-twa day of October, the year of God J^m
VJ^c and aucht yeares: it is appoyntit and aggreit betwix the pairties
following, viz., Mr Patrick Schairp, Principal of the College of
Glasgow, and Regentes thairof, with consent of the ordinar auditouris of
the said College compts, undersubscrivand on the ane part, and Andro
Hendersoun, Burges of the said burgh on the uther part, in manner
following.” Having afforded this initial specimen of the document, we
shall take the liberty of somewhat modifying the spelling of such parts
of the “manner following,” in quoting such portions of it as seem by
their curious character to demand notice; and herein we may observe that
we follow the example of a judicious Quaker we had once the pleasure of
being made known to, who, after a solicitous desire to know the
Christian name of his new acquaintance, with a few preliminary thee’s
and thou’s—as much as to say, you see the set I belong to—afterwards ran
into the usual current of conversation very much like a man of this
world. Well, the document, with much precision, continues to say:—
“The manner of the board shall be this: At nine hours upon the flesh
days—viz., Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—the said
Andrew shall prepare to the said masters, and others that pay as they
pay, ane soup of fine white bread, or ane portion of cold meat, as
best may be had, with some dry bread and drink. At twelve hours the
said Andrew shall cover ane table in the hall of the said College, and
shall serve them in brose, skink, sodden beef, and mutton, the best in
the market, rosted mutton or veel, as the commodity of the season of
the year shall serve, with a fowl, or the equivalent thereof, with
good wheat bread, the best in the market, without scarcity, and ‘gud
staill aill, aucht or ten dayis auld, that sall be bettir nor the
haill aill in the town,’ and at supper suchlike. And on fish days the
said Andrew shall furnish every ane in the morning ‘ane callour fresch
eg, with sum cauld meit or milk and breid, and sum dry breid and
drink; at noone, kaill and eggis, herring, and thrie course of fische,
give thai may be had, or the equivalent thairof in breid and milk,
fryouris with dry breid as of befoir,’ and at supper suchlike. The
mess of the bursars, which immediately follows, must be given
literatim: ‘On the fleshe dayis, in the morning, everie ane of thame,
ane soup of ait breid and ane drink; at noone, broois with ane tailye
of fresche beif, with sufficient breid and aill to drink; at evening,
on the said manner, ane tailye of fresche beif to everie meiss. On
fische dayis, breid and drink as in the flesche dayis; at disjoone,
ane eg; at noone, eggis, herring, and ane uther course; at evening
sicklyke.’”[139]
Probably such a bill of fare may dispel some notions about the sordid
living of our ancestors, and the privations especially of those who
dedicated themselves to a scholastic life. The existence of meagre
days—or fish days, as they are called—in the year 1608, suggests
explanations which we have not to offer. It would almost appear,
however, that, at least in the dietary of the superior class, a fish day
was one in which fish was added to a comfortable allotment of meat,
instead of being substituted for it. Another contract occurs in the year
1649, varying little from “the said Andrew’s,” except in the addition of
a few luxuries. The mess to be laid in the hall for dinner is to be
“broth, skink, sodden beef, and mutton, the best in the market, with
roasted mutton, lamb, veal, or hudderin, as the season of the year shall
serve, with wheat bread and good stale ale; and at supper suchlike, with
a capon or hen, or the equivalent.” The fish days continue to be
distinguished less by the diminution of flesh—since there is to be two
roasts in the day—than by the addition of fish. At supper there are to
be sweetmeats and “stoved plumdamas,” which may be interpreted stewed
prunes. Another article there introduced is called “stamped kaile.” The
application of the participle is new to us, though, as every one ought
to know, kail means broth, or what the French call _potage_; and a
critic in such matters suggests that the word stamped may refer to the
mashing of the materials. In the earlier of the contracts which we have
referred to, the board-money was—for the master’s table, £30 per
quarter, (Scots money, of course); and for the bursars’, £16. 13s. 4d.
The value of money had so far risen that in the next period the sums
were respectively £46 and £24. The master’s table was frequented by the
young aristocracy of Scotland, apparently in as ample a proportion as
those of England are now to be found at Oxford and Cambridge. Thus, in
an inventory of occupied rooms, apparently in one floor, the
aristocratic element has a decided preponderance in the nomenclature:
“Lord James’s chamber, Francis Montgomerie’s chamber, Kilmarnock’s
chamber, Richard Elphinstone’s chamber, George Smyth’s chamber, James
Fleming’s chamber, Joseph Gill’s chamber, James Simson’s chamber.”[140]
It is not perhaps generally known that the practice of a common table
was continued in St Andrews down to about the year 1820. In evidence
before the University Commission in 1827, Dr Hunter stated that “there
were two public tables; one of them, the higher table, was attended only
by boarders, and by the bursars on the Ramsay mortification; the board
was high, and the entertainment altogether was better: the other was the
bursars’ table. The college was induced to contract with an economist or
provisor to supply both tables; and if the boards fell short, or if the
expense increased from the articles of subsistence being dearer than
ordinary in any year, or exceeded the amount allowed by the contract,
the College often compensated to him that loss.” Having thus offered
some notices of the collegiate system in its full vitality, and traced
it to its last lurking-place, we cannot help giving a place to the
significant reflections which have occurred to the editor of the
_Glasgow Records_ on the extinction of the system.
“In all the universities in Scotland, the old collegiate life, so
favourable for scholastic discipline, has been abandoned. Perhaps the
increasing numbers rendered living in college under the masters’ eye
inconvenient; though some modification of the systems of living in the
universities and the great schools of England might meet the
difficulty. The present academic life in Scotland brings the master
and the student too little in contact, and does not enable the teacher
to educate in that which is more important than scholastic learning,
nor to study and train the temper, habits, and character. If the
alternative which has been chosen inferred that the student enjoyed
the benefit of parental or domestic care when out of the lecture-room,
the change might be less objectionable; but when we observe the crowds
of young men brought from distant homes to our universities, living at
large and altogether uncontrolled, except in the classroom, we may
look back with some regret to the time when the good regent of a
university, living among his pupils, came in the parent’s place as
well as the master’s.
“But it was not only the discipline of the university that was
benefited by the collegiate life. The spirit of fellowship that
existed among young men set apart for the common object of high
education, was on the whole favourable, though liable to exaggeration,
and often running into prejudice. Nearly all that common feeling of
the youth of a great university is gone. The shreds of it that are
preserved by the dress, scarcely honoured in the crowded streets of a
great city, and the rare occurrence of a general meeting of students,
serve only to suggest to what account it might be turned for exciting
the enthusiasm and raising the standard of conduct among the youth of
Scotland. If such collections as the present, in revealing the old
machinery of the scholar life, tend in any degree to the renewal of
the bond of common feeling among the younger students, and of sympathy
with their teachers, they will not be useless.”
We were led towards the vestiges of the collegiate system by the
observation, that while in England it had overshadowed and concealed the
original outline of the universities, it had in Scotland disappeared,
leaving the primitive institutions in their original loneliness. When we
contemplate, with this recollection, the decayed remains of the older
universities, it will be seen that they were not so inferior in wealth
and magnificence to those of our neighbours, as the mass of collegiate
institutions which these have gathered around the primitive university
might lead one to suppose. Undoubtedly Christ Church and King’s Chapel
are fine buildings; but the remains of the chapels of St Salvator at St
Andrews, and of King’s College in Aberdeen, are not to be despised. Of
the former, alas! there are little more than the truncated walls and
buttresses, with here and there a decoration to show what the edifice
was when it stood forth in all its symmetry. Near the end of last
century a suspicion was entertained that the roof was decayed and would
fall. So groundless was the supposition, that after the workmen who were
removing it had gone too far to recede, they found that they could not
take it to pieces, but must first weaken its connection with the wall
plates, and let it fall plump down. Of course it smashed to atoms nearly
every interior ornament, and it just left enough of the marble tomb of
its founder, Bishop Kennedy, to let us see what a marvellous group of
richly-cut Gothic work it must have originally been. Within it there
were found, among other ornaments, a heavy silver mace of Parisian
workmanship, wonderful as the tomb itself for the quaint intricacy of
its workmanship.
The chapel of King’s College has fared better. Like a modest northern
wild-flower, its beauties are hidden from the common gaze of the peering
tourist, but to the adepts who examine them they are of no ordinary
character. From the difficulty of working the indigenous granite, and
the cost of importing freestone, the Gothic builders of this district
seem to have been frugal in their stone decorations, so that the glory
of King’s College consists in its interior wood-work of carved oak,
worked in architectural forms, like fairy masonry. We question if there
is anywhere a collection of specimens of Gothic fretwork more varied and
delicate.
It is difficult to conceive anything more depictive of high and daring
educational aspirations than the planting of this beautiful edifice in
so distant a spot, as the place of worship of those students who were to
flock to it from the wild hills and dreary moors of the north. Its
founder was Bishop Elphinston, an ardent scholar, a traveller, and a
frequenter of the Continental universities, who might rather have been
expected, had he followed the dictates of his refined tastes instead of
his conscientious convictions, and his zeal for the spread of learning,
to have spent his days among the Continental scholars, than to have
carried their learning across the Grampians. The character of the
foundation may be derived from the following abstract of the Bull of
erection of 1495, prefixed to the Spalding edition of the _Fasti
Aberdonienses_.
“Bull of Pope Alexander VI., issued on the petition of James IV., King
of Scots, which sets forth that the north parts of his kingdom were
inhabited by a rude, illiterate, and savage people, and therefore
erecting in the City of Old Aberdeen a ‘Studium Generale’ and
University, as well for theology, canon and civil law, medicine, and
the liberal arts, as for any other lawful faculty, to be there studied
and taught by ecclesiastical and lay Masters and Doctors, in the same
manner as in the ‘Studia Generalia’ of Paris and Bologna, and for
conferring on deserving persons the degrees of Bachelor, Licentiate,
Doctor, Master, and all other degrees and honourable distinctions;
conferring on William, Bishop of Aberdeen, and his successors, the
office of Chancellor, empowering them, or, during the vacancy of the
See, the Vicar deputed by the Chapter, to confer these degrees in all
the faculties on such well-behaved scholars as shall, after due
examination, be deemed fit by the Rector, Regents, Masters, or Doctors
of the faculty in which the degree is sought; granting to such
graduates full power of teaching in this or any other _studium_,
without any other examination; giving power to the Chancellor or his
Vicar, the Rector for the time, and the resident Doctors, with the
assistance of a competent number of Licentiates in each faculty, and
of circumspect scholars of the said _studium_, and of two of the
King’s Councillors at the least, to make statutes for the good
government thereof; and conferring on the students and graduates
thereof all the privileges and immunities of any other University. 10
February, 1494–5.”
The character of the institution, and the extent to which it embodied
the matured practices of the foreign universities, will be more amply
understood by a document, dated a few years later, in the shape of a
collegiate endowment by the Bishop, applicable, along with the
foundation of a certain Duncan Scherar, to thirty-six members.
“Of the foresaid thirty-six persons, five to be Masters of Arts and
Students of Theology, exercising the functions of the priesthood, and
daily acting as readers and Regents in Arts, each having a stipend of
ten pounds, four of them being paid out of the lands and feu-duties
assigned by the Bishop, and the fifth out of the foundation of the
foresaid Duncan Scherar; thirteen to be scholars or poor clerks, fit
for instruction in speculative knowledge, and whose parents cannot
support them at scholastic exercises, twelve of them having each a
stipend of twelve merks from the revenues of the said churches, with
chambers and other college conveniences, and the thirteenth a stipend
of five pounds from the foundation of the said Duncan Scherar; the
five Students of Theology to be supported for seven years until they
are licensed, and one of these, of sweet temper, to be selected by the
Principal and Sub-principal to read and teach poetry and rhetoric to
the other Students; and the Students in Arts to be supported for three
years and a half until made Masters; at the end of which periods,
these Students of Theology and Arts, whether graduated or not, to be
removed, and others instituted in their stead; the Principal,
Canonist, Civilist, Mediciner, Sub-principal, and Grammarian, to be
nominated by the Bishop and his successors, Chancellors of the
University; the Students of Theology to be admitted by the Chancellor,
and nominated by the Rector, Dean of Faculty of the Arts, Principal
and Sub-principal; and the thirteen Scholars to be admitted in like
manner, and nominated by the above parties and the Regent of Arts; of
the thirteen Students in Arts, the two first to be of the name of
Elphinstoun, who, after being graduated in Arts, shall be admitted
among the Students of Theology, and three to be from the parishes of
Aberlethnot, Glenmyk, Abirgerny, and Slanis: all the members to have
their residence within the College, except the Canonist, Mediciner,
Grammarian, and Regent, who are to have manses without the College;
the Principal and the Students of Theology, after being made
Bachelors, to read Theology every reading-day, and to preach six times
a year to the people; and the Students, before being made Bachelors,
to preach by turns in Latin in the Chapter of the College on every
Lord’s day and holiday throughout the year before all the students;
the Regents in Arts to give instruction in the liberal sciences, like
the Regents of the University of Paris; and the Canonist, Civilist,
and Mediciner to read in proper attire every reading-day, after the
manner observed in the Universities of Paris and Orleans; the Rector
or (if he be a member of the College) the Dean of the Faculty of Arts,
and the Official of Aberdeen, to visit the College once a year, and to
mark defects in the persons and property of the College, an account of
which shall be written by four persons, deputed for that effect, and
presented to the Chancellor, who, with their advice, shall administer
correction; a Procurator to be selected from the College by the
Principal, Canonist, Civilist, Sub-principal, Cantor, and Sacrist, and
to have for his pains, in addition to his stipend, five merks; eight
Prebendaries and four youths, accomplished in singing, to be in the
College, and to celebrate matins, vespers, and mass, in surplices and
black copes, in the presence of the members of the college; the first
of these Prebendaries to be called the Cantor, and the second the
Sacrist, each with a stipend of twenty merks; the other prebendaries
(from among whom the Chancellor must appoint one who is a proficient
on the organ) having sixteen merks, and each of the youths five merks.
17 September 1505.”
It is curious to mark how distinctly the traces of its French origin
have remained in the northern University. In addition to some instances
in the preceding article, it is worthy of notice that the Students, and
even the common people, are still familiar with such words as Bejant and
Magistrand.
Can our chubby friend there, who blushes as brightly as the fresh
scarlet gown in which he has gone forth to attract the gaze, more
spiteful than admiring, of the untogaed schoolfellows whom he has left
behind him, tell why he is called a Bejant?
Ducange tells us that _Beanus_ means a new student who has just come to
the academy, and cites the statutes of the University of Vienna,
prohibiting all persons from cheating or overcharging the new-comers,
who are called Beani, or assailing them with other injuries or
contumelies. Lambecius, in the _Epistolæ Obscurorum_, finds Beanus in a
monogram—“Beanus est animal nesciens vitam studiosorum.” We come nearer
the mark, however, in France, the _Bejauni_ frequently occurring in
Bulleus’s massive History of the University of Paris. Thus, in the year
1314, a statute of the University is passed on the supplication of a
number of the inexperienced youths, _qui vulgo Bejauni appellebantur_.
Their complaint is an old and oft-repeated tale, common to freshmen,
greenhorns, griffins, or by whatever name the inexperienced, when
alighting among old stagers, are recognised. The statute of the
Universitas states that a variety of predatory personages fall on the
newly-arrived bejaune, demanding a _bejaunica_, or gratuity, to
celebrate a _jocundus adventus_; that when it is refused, they have
recourse to insults and blows; that there is brawling and bloodshed in
the matter, and thus the discipline and studies of the University are
disturbed by the pestiferous disease. It is thence prohibited to give
any _bejaunica_, except to the bejaun’s companions living in the house
with him, whom he may entertain if he pleases; and if any efforts are
made by others to impose on him, he is solemnly enjoined to give secret
information to the procurators and the deans of the faculties.[141]
The etymology attributed to the word bejaune is rather curious. It is
said to mean yellow neb—_béc jaune_—in allusion to the physical
peculiarity of unfledged and inexperienced birds, to whose condition
those who have just passed from the function of robbing their nests to
the discipline of a university are supposed to have an obvious
resemblance. “Ce mot,” says the _Trevaux_, “a été dit par corruption de
béc jaune, per métaphore de oisons et autres oiseaux niais qui ont le
béc jaune—ce qu’on a appliqué aux apprentis en tous les arts et
sciences.—_Rudis Tiro Imperitus._” Yet in the same dictionary there are
such explanations about the use of the words _begayer_, to stutter, and
_begayement_, stuttering, as might, one would think, have furnished a
more obvious origin than the ornithological. “Les enfans,” we are told,
“begayent en apprenant à parler. Ceux qui ont la langue grasse begayent
toute leur vie. Quand un homme a bû beaucoup il commence a _begayer_.”
But it is used also figuratively: “Des choses qu’on a peine d’expliquer,
ou de faire entendre—Ce commentateur n’a fait que begayer en voulant
expliquer l’Apocalypse.” Whatever were its remote origin, however, the
term was in full use in the University of Paris, whence it passed to
Aberdeen. We have now shown our scarlet friend the reason for his being
called a Bejant, but why the word should be corrupted into Benjie, and
still more why he should be called a “Buttery benjie,” are etymological
problems which we no more pretend to solve, than the reason why his
fellow freshman at Heidelberg is called a Leathery fox.
We could notice several other relics of ancient university phraseology
still clinging round the usages of our humble institutions in Scotland.
The Lauration is still preserved as the apt and classical term for the
ceremony of admission to a degree; and even Dr Johnson, little as he
respected any Scottish form, especially when it competed with the
legitimate institutions of England, has given in his dictionary the word
Laureation, with this interpretation attached thereto: “It denotes in
the Scottish universities the act or state of having degrees conferred,
as they have in some of them a flowery crown, in imitation of laurel
among the ancients.”
Elsewhere we are honoured in the same work with a more brief but still a
distinctive notice. Among the definitions of “Humanity,” after “the
nature of man,” “humankind,” and “benevolence,” we have
“Philology—grammatical studies; in Scotland, _humaniores literæ_.” The
term is still as fresh at Aberdeen as when Maimbourg spoke of Calvin
making his humanities at the College of La Mark. The “Professor of
Humanity” has his place in the almanacs and other official lists as if
there were nothing antiquated or peculiar in the term, though jocular
people have been known to state to unsophisticated Cockneys and other
foreign persons, that the object of the chair is to inculcate on the
young mind the virtue of exercising humanity towards the lower animals;
and we believe more than one stranger has conveyed away, in the title of
this professorship, a standing illustration of the elaborate kindness
exercised towards the lower animals in the United Kingdom, and in
Scotland especially.
A curious incidental matter calls us back to King’s College and its
connection with Paris. In his visit to Scotland in 1633, Charles I.
observed, or learned from his adviser, Archbishop Laud, who had more
prying eyes, that the ancient formalities of the Scottish universities
had fallen into disuse. It appears that his hopes of a restoration were
chiefly centred in Aberdeen, where he knew that the Presbyterian spirit
had its loosest hold, and he resolved to commence the work there. A
curious royal letter to Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen, and
Chancellor of the University, drops mysterious hints about having
“observed some things which we think fit to put in better ordour, which
we shall do as we shall find cause.” But in the mean time there is a
very strong reprehension of the unacademic practice of sending the
students “to the parish churches to service and sermon, and there sit
promiscuously with the rest of the audience, which loses much of the
honour and dignity of the Universities.”
The cause of University restoration, after such a kingly hint, naturally
received much local support; and at a sort of convocation of the
University dignitaries at the Bishop’s Palace on the 19th of December
1634, some investigations were made to obtain materials “for
re-establishing of this University in her jurisdiction, conservatorie,
and privileges, according to her ancient rights granted thereanent.”
Among the other methods of inquiry, there is sent “a special letter to
our native countryman and special good friend, Dr William Davidson,
Doctor of Physic, and resident in Paris in France, requesting him to
deal, in name of the said University of Aberdeen, with the rector and
University of Paris, for a just and perfect written double of the rights
and privileges of that University of Paris, for the better clearing and
setting in good order the rights and privileges belonging to this
University of Aberdeen.”[142]
A letter from Archbishop Laud is read to the meeting, showing that he
was in communication with the restorers. “For the business which you
have recommended to me,” he says, “Dr Gordon hath been with me, and
delivered me a copy of all those things which he hath to move the king.
I have already spoken with his majesty about them, and shall continue to
do him all the kindness I can to help on his despatch, and to show all
the favour I can to the University.”[143]
It would be interesting to know more than the printed documents show us
of the projects then under discussion. Laud was a meddler with many
things—in Scotland, unfortunately, with at least one too many. His
activity in university matters is sufficiently known to fame in the
Laudeian Code of Oxford. But it has been the fate of that system to be
charged with a subversion of the fundamental principles of the English
universities, while in Aberdeen the movement which its author seems to
have directed was towards the restoration of the old Parisian model. The
apparent difference, however, has been probably caused by unintended
practical results in England,—the object was doubtless the same in both
cases.
Among the projects of King Charles with which his adviser of course
interfered, was the union of King’s and Marischal Colleges in Aberdeen.
In fact, they are not only two colleges, but, in the literal sense of
the term, two universities; and thus, according to the statistical
distribution of these institutions, Aberdeen used to appear as well
supplied with the commodity as all England. Between the two
establishments, little more than a mile apart, there is, indeed,
unfortunately, a gulf, wider than the mileage between Oxford and
Cambridge. The one was founded before, the other after, the Reformation;
and there were elements so distinct and repulsive in the spirit of the
foundations, that nothing but great coercive force could bring the two
into union.
King Charles, who was too apt to suppose that fundamental changes could
be made by an Act of Visitation, or an Order in Council, professed to
unite them, and called them, in conjunction, the Caroline University.
But in reality they never were chemically fused into one. On the
contrary, the documents connected with the nominal union, which at this
juncture may perhaps be read with some interest, lead one to suppose
that the two bodies of office-bearers could hardly have met round the
same table without kicking each other’s shins. The senior institution
exhibits itself as overbearing and dictatorial—the junior as sensitive
to every slight. All latent hatreds seem to have sprung into vivid life
on the command to be united in peace. The juveniles appear to have taken
the matter up, and each college passes a law requiring that its students
shall not insult the professors of the other,—apparently with the same
effect, if not intention, as the Irish injunction not to duck the
bailiff in the horse-pond. We wonder if the same thing is to be repeated
in this day. We have heard it, indeed, maintained from a very grave
authority, that nearly all things are possible save the fusion of these
institutions; that it may have been easy to unite England and Scotland,
or Great Britain and Ireland, but that the eternal laws of the universe
show it to be impossible to unite the King’s College and University of
Aberdeen with the Marischal College and University thereof.