THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY
The chroniclers of every mediæval town like to begin from Jove--or
Genesis. The Oxford historians are no exception.
Famous antiquaries of ancient days carried back the date of the city to
fabulous years. Wood gives the year 1009 B.C. as the authentic date,
when Memphric, King of the Britons, built it and called it Caer
Memphric. But these famous antiquaries, as we shall see, had an axe to
grind.
Whatever the origin of Oxford may have been, a few bronze weapons and
some pottery, preserved in the Museum, are the only remains of the
British period that have been discovered. Great as were the natural
advantages of the place, lying as it does on the banks of the chief
river of the country at a point where a tributary opens up a district to
the north, it would yet seem that there was no British settlement of
importance at Oxford, for it was dangerous borderland between the
provinces into which Britain was divided, liable to frequent hostile
incursions, and therefore left uninhabited. And this would seem to be
the reason why, when the road-making Romans were driving their great
streets through the neighbourhood, they left this seductive ford
severely alone.
The first chronicler to associate Oxford with the name of King Memphric
was John Rous, an imaginative historian, no respecter of facts, who
died, full of years and inventions, in 1491. Hear him discourse in his
fluent, pleasantly circumstantial style:
"About this time Samuel the servant of God was Judge in Judea, and
King Magdan had two sons, that is to say Mempricius and Malun. The
younger of the two having been treacherously slain by the elder,
the fratricide inherited the kingdom. In the twentieth year of his
reign, he was surrounded by a large pack of very savage wolves, and
being torn and devoured by them, ended his existence in a horrible
manner. Nothing good is related of him except that he begot an
honest son and heir, Ebrancus by name, and built one noble city
which he called from his own name Caer-Memre, but which afterwards
in course of time was called Bellisitum, then Caerbossa, at length
Ridohen, and last of all Oxonia, or by the Saxons Oxenfordia, from
a certain egress out of a neighbouring ford. There arose here in
after years an universal and noble seat of learning, derived from
the renowned University of Grek-lade.
"It is situated between the rivers Thames and Cherwell which meet
there. The city, just as Jerusalem, has to all appearance been
changed; for as Mount Calvary, when Christ was crucified, was just
outside the walls of the city, and now is contained within the
circuit of the walls, so also there is now a large level space
outside Oxford, contiguous to the walls of the town, which is
called Belmount, which means beautiful mount, and this in a certain
way agrees with one of the older names of the city before named and
recited; that is to say Bellisitum; whence many are of opinion that
the University from Greklade was transferred to this very Bellus
Mons or Bellesitum before the coming of the Saxons and while the
Britons ruled the island, and the Church of S. Giles, which was
dedicated under the name of some other saint, was the place for the
creation of graduates, as now is the Church of S. Mary, which is
within the walls...."
The origin of the city is, of course, not the same thing as the origin
of the University, and John Rous, it will be observed, has adopted the
story according to which the University was said to have been
transplanted to Oxford from "Grekelade." This story is found in its
earliest form in the Oxford _Historiola_, the account of the University
prefixed to the official registers of the chancellor and proctors. It
was probably written towards the end of the reign of Edward III.,
somewhere in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The sound of
Greek in the name Cricklade is quite
[Illustration: The Turret Quad Merton College]
enough, in the minds of those who have studied mediæval
chronicles--histories "farct with merry tales and frivolous poetry"--to
account for the origin of the myth as to the Greek philosophers. Do you
not find for instance, the name of Lechelade suggesting Latin schools
(Latinelade) at that place by an analogous etymological conceit?
Saith the _Historiola_, then, after premising that the University is the
most ancient, the most comprehensive, the most orthodox and the most
richly endowed with privileges:--
"Very ancient British histories imply the priority of its
foundation, for it is related that amongst the warlike Trojans,
when with their leader Brutus they triumphantly seized the island,
then called Albion, next Britain, and lastly England, certain
philosophers came and chose a suitable place of habitation upon
this island, on which the philosophers who had been Greek bestowed
the name which they have left behind them as a record of their
presence, and which exists to the present day, that is to say
Grekelade...."
The grounds of the other statements quoted from John Rous are yet more
fanciful. The assertion that the University was transferred from without
to within the city walls is a vague echo of a worthless story, and the
name given to the town Bellesitum is obviously a confusion arising from
the latinised form of Beaumont, the palace which Henry I. built on the
slope towards S. Giles. The names of Caer-bossa and Ridochen
(Rhyd-y-chen) are equally unhistorical, and are based upon the fantastic
Welsh equivalents of Oxenford, invented by the fertile genius of
Geoffrey of Monmouth for the purposes of his romance (twelfth century).
It would scarcely have been worth while to mention even so briefly the
ingenious myths of the early chroniclers if it had not been for the fact
that they have swamped more scientific history and that they were used
with immense gusto by the champions in that extraordinary controversy
which broke out in the days of Elizabeth, and lasted, an inky warfare of
wordy combatants, almost for centuries. It was a controversy in which
innumerable authorities were quoted, and resort was had even to the
desperate device of forgery.
It arose from the boast of the Cambridge orator, who on the occasion of
a visit of Elizabeth to Cambridge, declared:
"To our great glory all histories with one voice testify that the
Oxford University borrowed from Cambridge its most learned men, who
in its schools provided the earliest cradle of the _ingenuæ artes_,
and that Paris also and Cologne were derived from our University."
With that assertion the fat was in the fire. Assertions were issued, and
counter-assertions, commentaries and counter-commentaries.
It is impossible to follow the course of the controversy here. Suffice
it to say that when the war had been waged for some years, it seemed
evident that the victory would lie with the Oxonians, who claimed Alfred
as their founder, if they could prove their claim. And the claim
appeared to be proved by a passage attributed to Asser, the contemporary
historian of Alfred's deeds, and surreptitiously inserted into his
edition of that author by the great Camden. But that passage occurs in
none of the manuscripts of Asser, and certainly not in the one which
Camden copied. It was probably adopted by him on the authority of an
unscrupulous but interested partisan who, having invented it, attributed
it to a "superior manuscript of Asser."
The University cannot, then, claim Alfred the Great either as her
founder or restorer. All the known facts and indications point the other
way. It was not till 912, some years after Alfred's death, that Edward
the Elder obtained possession of Oxford, which was outside Alfred's
kingdom; Asser knew nothing of this foundation. It was not till the days
of Edward III., that Ralph Higden's _Polychronicon_ apparently gave
birth to the myth with the statement that Alfred--
"By the counsel of S. Neot the Abbot, was the first to establish
schools for the various arts at Oxford; to which city he granted
privileges of many kinds."
And from that time the myth was repeated and grew.
But if King Alfred did not found the University who did? or how did it
come into existence?
Briefly the case stands thus. Before the second half of the twelfth
century--the age of Universities--there are no discoverable traces of
such a thing at Oxford, but in the last twenty years of that century
references to it are frequent and decided. The University was evidently
established, and its reputation was widely spread.
There abounded there, contemporaries inform us, "men skilled in mystic
eloquence, weighing the words of the law, bringing forth from their
treasures things new and old." And the University was dubbed by the
proud title "The Second School of the Church."
She was second, that is, to Paris, as a school of Theology, and to
Paris, the researches of modern experts like Dr Rashdall lead us to
believe, she owed her origin.
The Universities, the greatest and perhaps the most permanent of
Mediæval Institutions, were a gradual and almost secret growth. For long
centuries Europe had been sunk in the gloom of the Dark Ages. The light
of learning shone in the cloister alone, and there burned with but a dim
and flickering flame. In Spain not one priest in a thousand about the
age of Charlemagne could address a common letter of salutation to
another. Scarcely a single person could be found in Rome who knew the
first elements of letters; in England, Alfred declared that he could not
recollect one priest at the time of his accession who understood the
ordinary prayers. Learning lay buried in the grave of Bede. At Court,
emperors could not write, and in the country contracts were made
verbally for lack of notaries who could draw up charters.
But towards the end of the eleventh century Europe began to recover from
this state of poverty and degradation. Christendom had gained a new
impulse from the Crusades. Trade revived and began to develop, some
degree of tranquillity was restored, and the growing wealth of the world
soon found expression in an increasing refinement of manners, in the
sublime and beautiful buildings of the age of Cathedrals, and in a
greater ardour for intellectual pursuits.
A new fervour of study arose in the West from its contact with the more
cultured East. Everywhere throughout Europe great schools which bore the
name of Universities were established.
The long mental inactivity of Europe broke up like ice before a summer's
sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or Anselm, crossed sea and
land to spread the new power of knowledge. The same spirit of
restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the older traditions of
mankind, either local or intellectual, that had hurried half Christendom
to the tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands of young
scholars, hurrying to the chosen seats where teachers were gathered
together. A new power, says an eloquent historian, had sprung up in the
midst of a world as yet under the rule of sheer brute force. Poor as
they were, sometimes even of a servile race, the wandering scholars, who
lectured in every cloister, were hailed as "Masters" by the crowds at
their feet.
This title of "Master" suggests, of course, the nomenclature of the
Guilds. A University, in fact, was a Guild of Study. The word
implies[13] a community of individuals bound together for any purpose,
in this case for the purpose of teaching. It was applied to the whole
body of students frequenting the "studium," and hence the term came to
be used as synonymous with "studium" to denote the institution itself.
The system of academical degrees dates from the second half of the
twelfth century. After the manner of mediæval craftsmen in other trades,
the profession of teaching was limited to those who had served an
apprenticeship in a University or Guild of Study and were qualified as
Masters of their Art. Nobody was allowed to teach without a licence from
such a Guild, just as no butcher or tailor was allowed to ply his trade
without having served his proper term and having been approved by the
Masters of his Guild. A University degree, therefore, was originally
simply a diploma of teaching, which afterwards came to be regarded as a
title, when retained by men who had ceased to lecture or teach.
"Bachelor" was the term applied to students who had ceased to be pupils
but had not yet become teachers. The word was generally used to denote
an apprentice or aspirant to Knighthood, but in the Universities came to
have this technical signification. The degree of Bachelor was in fact an
important step on the way to the higher degree of Master or Doctor.
One of the first symptoms of the twelfth century renaissance may be
traced in the revival in Italy of the study of jurisprudence as derived
from the laws of Justinian. For early in the twelfth century a professor
named Irnerius opened a school of civil law at Bologna, and Lombardy was
soon full of lawyers. Teachers of that profitable art soon spread from
Bologna throughout Europe, and their University was the first to receive
from Frederic Barbarossa the privileges of legal incorporation. It
presently became known as the special University of young archdeacons,
whose mode of life gave rise to the favourite subject of debate "Can an
archdeacon be saved?" But it was the school of philosophy at Paris which
chiefly attracted the newly-kindled enthusiasm of the studious. The
tradition of the schools of Charlemagne may have lingered there,
although no direct connection between them and the University which now
sprang into being can be proved. As early as 1109 William of Champeaux
opened a school of logic, and it was to his brilliant and combative
pupil, Peter Abelard, that the University owed its rapid advancement in
the estimation of mankind. The multitude of disciples who flocked to his
lectures, and listened with delight to his bold theories and his
assertion of the rights of reason against authority, showed that a new
spirit of enquiry and speculation was abroad. The poets and orators of
antiquity were, indeed, beginning to be studied with genuine admiration,
and the introduction into Europe of some of the Arabian writings on
geometry and physics was opening the door to the development of
mathematical science. But the flower of intellectual and scientific
enquiry was destined to be nipped in the bud by the blighting influence
of scholasticism. Already among the pupils of Abelard was numbered Peter
Lombard, the future author of "The Sentences," a system of the doctrines
of the Church, round which the dogmatic theology of the schoolmen,
trammelled by a rigid network of dialectics, was to grow up.
It was the light before a dawn which never broke into day. But as yet
the period was one of awakening and promise. Students from all parts
crowded to Paris, and the Faculty[14] of Arts in the University was
divided into four "nations"--those of France, Picardy, Normandy and
England. John of Salisbury became famous as one of the Parisian
teachers. Becket wandered to Paris from his school at Merton. After
spending twelve years at Paris, John of Salisbury, the central figure of
English learning in his time, finally returned to England. S. Bernard
recommended him to Archbishop Theobald, and in the archbishop's
household at Canterbury he found in existence a very School of
Literature, where scholars like Vacarius came to lecture on civil law,
where lectures and disputations were regularly held, and men like Becket
and John of Poictiers were trained.
"In the house of my Lord the Archbishop," writes Peter of Blois,
"are most scholarly men, with whom is found all the uprightness of
justice, all the caution of providence, every form of learning.
They after prayers and before meals, in reading, in disputing, in
the decision of causes constantly exercise themselves. All the
knotty questions of the realms are referred to us...."
This archiepiscopal school was in fact a substitute for the as yet
undeveloped Universities. Besides this school there were, in England,
schools in connection with all the great Cathedral establishments and
with many of the monasteries as well as the houses of the nobles. There
were, for instance, great schools at S. Alban's and at Oxford. But these
_studia_ were not _studia generalia_; they were schools merely, not
Universities. It was perhaps to the school which had sprung up in
connection with S. Frideswide's monastery that Vacarius lectured, if he
lectured at Oxford at all.
It was in such a monastic school, in connection with S. Frideswide's,
Osney, or S. George's in the Castle, that Robert Pullen of Paris
lectured on the Bible for five years (1133), and Theobaldus Stampensis
taught. Henry Beauclerc endeavoured to retain the services of the former
by offering him a bishopric, but he refused it and left England;
Stephen, on the other hand, bade Vacarius cease from lecturing, since
the new system of law, which he taught and which had converted the
Continent, was inconsistent with the old laws of the English realm. As
to Theobaldus Stampensis, he styles himself Magister Oxenefordiæ, and
letters from him exist which show that he, a Norman ecclesiastic who had
taught at Caen, taught at Oxford before 1117. An anonymous reply to a
tractate in which he attacked the monks, is responsible for the
statement that this former Doctor of Caen had at Oxford "sixty or a
hundred clerks, more or less." But one school or one lecturer does not
make a University.
It has, however, been held, that just as the University of Paris
developed from the schools of Notre Dame, so the University of Oxford
grew out of the monastic schools of S. Frideswide's. Such a growth would
have been natural. But if this had been the real origin of the
University, it may be regarded as certain that the members of it would
have been subjected to some such authority as that exercised by the
Chancellor of Notre Dame over the masters and scholars of Paris. But at
Oxford, the masters and scholars were never under the jurisdiction of
the Prior or Abbot of S. Frideswide's or Osney. If they had been, some
trace or record of their struggle for emancipation must have survived.
The Chancellor, moreover, when he is first mentioned, proves to be
elected by the masters and scholars and to derive his authority, not
from any capitular or monastic body in Oxford, but from the Bishop of
Lincoln. And the University buildings themselves, in their primitive
form, bear silent witness to the same fact, that the schools or studium
in connection with which the University grew up were in no way connected
with conventual churches and monasteries. For the schools were not near
S. Frideswide's but S. Mary's.
The independence of the Oxford masters from any local ecclesiastical
authority is a significant fact. Combined with another it seems to admit
of but one explanation. That other fact is the suddenness with which the
reputation of Oxford sprang up. Before 1167 there is, as we have shown,
no evidence of the existence of a _studium generale_ there, but there
are indications enough that in the next few years students began to
come, clerks from all parts of England.
The account of the visit of Giraldus Cambrensis (1184-5) reveals the
existence of a Studium on a large scale, with a number of Masters and
Faculties. It is a Studium Generale by that time without a doubt. And in
1192 Richard of Devizes speaks of the clerks of Oxford as so numerous
that the city could hardly feed them.
What, then, is the explanation of this so sudden development? Probably
it lies in a migration of scholars to Oxford at this time. The migratory
habits of mediæval masters and scholars are familiar to everyone who has
the smallest acquaintance with the history of the Universities. The
Universities of Leipzig, Reggio, Vicenza, Vercelli, and Padua, for
instance, were founded by migrations from one University or another. The
story of Oxford itself will furnish instances in plenty of the readiness
of the University to threaten to migrate and, when hard pressed, to
fulfil their threat. Migrations to Cambridge, Stamford, and Northampton
are among the undoubted facts of our history. Such a migration then
would be in the natural course of things, though it would not satisfy
the pride of the inventors of the Alfred myth. But a migration of this
kind did not take place without a cause. A cause however is not to seek.
At this very period the quarrel of Henry II. with Thomas a Becket was
the occasion for a migration from Paris, the ordinary seat of higher
education for English ecclesiastics.
A letter from John of Salisbury to Peter the Writer in 1167 contains
this remark: "France, the most polite and civilised of all nations, has
expelled the foreign students from her borders."
This, as Dr Rashdall suggests, may possibly have been a measure of
hostility aimed by the French King against the oppressor of Holy Church
and against the English ecclesiastics, who as a body sided with their
King against their not yet canonised primate.
Henry II., on the other hand, took the same measures to punish the
partisans of Becket. All clerks were forbidden to go to or from the
Continent without leave of the King, and all clerks who possessed
revenues in England were summoned to return to England within three
months, "as they love their revenues." This would produce an exodus from
Paris. A large number of English masters and scholars must have been
compelled to return home. According to the usual procedure of mediæval
students they were likely to collect in some one town and set up under
their old masters something of their old organisation. These ordinances
were promulgated between the years 1165 and 1169. The ports were
strictly watched in order to enforce this edict.
The migrating scholars would land at Dover and lodge, perhaps, for a
night or two at the Benedictine Priory there, before going on to
Canterbury. Here, if they had been so minded, they might have stayed,
and swelled the great literary circle, with its teachers and libraries,
which had been formed there. But they left Gervase at Canterbury to
write his history, and Nigel to compose his verses and polish his
satires. Passing northwards, they might, had they come a little later,
have been absorbed at Lambeth, and the scheme of Archbishop Baldwin for
setting up a College there, which should be a centre of ecclesiastical
learning, emancipated from monastic restrictions, might then have been
realised. Or, if they had wished to attach themselves to any existing
establishment, the monastic schools of St Alban's might have welcomed
them.
But they chose otherwise. It may be that their experience of Paris led
them to choose a place which was neither a capital nor a See-town. At
any rate the peculiar position of Oxford, which was neither of these and
yet an important commercial and political centre, made it admirably
suited for the free development of a University, unharassed by bishops
and unmolested by lord mayors.
At Oxford, too, was the Palace of the King, and Henry II. was a champion
of literary culture by his very descent. His grandfather had earned the
title of Henry Beauclerk, the scholar King; and Fulk the Good, who had
told King Lothar that an unlearned king is a crowned ass, was a lineal
ancestor of his. And apart from his own hereditary tastes, the position
of Henry as the most powerful king of the West, and the international
correspondence which that position involved, tended to make the Court a
centre of literary activity. Learning was sought not for itself only,
but as a part of the equipment of a man of the world. For whatever
reason, whether they were influenced by a desire, springing from
experience of Paris, to establish themselves where they might be most
independent, or by the physical advantages of Oxford, or the hope of
favour from the King who had recalled them, and who at his Court and
about his Palace of Beaumont had gathered round him all that was
enlightened and refined in English and Norman society, or whether they
were directed by mere chance, settling for a session and staying for
centuries, it was to Oxford they came.
Here ready to receive them they would find a town which stood in the
front rank of municipalities, commanding the river valley along which
the commerce of Southern England mainly flowed. The mitred Abbey of
Austin Canons, the Priory of S. Frideswide, the Castle of the D'Oiglis,
and the Royal Palace without the Vallum marked the ecclesiastical and
political importance of the place; the settlement of one of the
wealthiest of the English Jewries in the very heart of the town
indicated, as it promoted, the activity of its trade. It was still
surrounded on all sides by a wild forest country. The moors of Cowley
and Bullingdon fringed the course of the Thames; the great woods of
Shotover and Bagley closed the horizon on south and east. But Oxford was
easy of access, for there were the great roads that crossed at Carfax
and there was the thoroughfare of the Thames. And facility of
communication meant regularity of supplies, a matter of great importance
to a floating population of poor students.
Here, then, the migrating masters and scholars set up their schools, and
within a very short time the reputation of the University was
established throughout the length and breadth of the land.
Giraldus Cambrensis, a Welshman, who had achieved fame as a lecturer at
Paris, has given us an interesting account of his visit to Oxford in
1187. He came there with the purpose of reading aloud portions of his
new work, as Herodotus read his history at the Panathenaic festival at
Athens or at the National Games of Greece. Giraldus had written a book
on Ireland--Topographia--and he chose this method of publishing and
advertising it. He writes of himself in the third person, without any
excessive modesty. You might almost think he was a modern author, asking
his critics to dinner and writing his own "Press notices."
"In course of time, when the work was finished and revised, not
wishing to hide his candle under a bushel, but wishing to place it
in a candlestick so that it might give light, he resolved to read
it before a vast audience at Oxford, where the clergy in England
chiefly flourished and excelled in clerkly lore. And as there were
three distinctions or divisions in the work, and each division
occupied a day, the readings lasted three successive days. On the
first day he received and entertained at his lodgings all the poor
people of the whole town; on the second all the doctors of the
different faculties, and such of their pupils as were of fame and
note; on the third the rest of the scholars with the milites of the
town, and many burghers. It was a costly and noble act, for the
authentic and ancient times of the poets were thus in some measure
renewed; and neither present nor past time can furnish any record
of such a solemnity having ever taken place in England."
It is evident from this passage that the Schools at Oxford were by this
time of considerable note and size. There was a University here now in
fact if not in name or by charter. A few years later the records reveal
to us the first known student in it. He was a clerk from Hungary named
Nicholas, to whom Richard I. who had been born in the Palace of
Beaumont, made an allowance of half a mark weekly for his support during
his stay at Oxford for the purpose of study.
Thus, then, by the beginning of the reign of King John, we may be sure
that there was established at Oxford a University, or place of general
study, and this University had attracted to itself an academic
population, which was estimated by contemporaries at no less than three
thousand souls. And now, just as the country won its Great Charter of
Liberties from that oppressive and intolerable Angevin monarch, so
documentary evidence of the independent powers of the University was
first obtained, as the result of a series of events, in which the
citizens of Oxford had been encouraged to commit an act of unjust
revenge by their reliance on John's quarrel with the pope and the
clergy. The pope had laid the whole country under an interdict; the
people were forbidden to worship their God and the priests to administer
the sacraments; the church-bells were silent and the dead lay unburied
on the ground. The King retaliated by confiscating the land of the
clergy who observed the interdict, by subjecting them in spite of their
privileges to the Royal Courts, and often by leaving outrages on them
unpunished. "Let him go," he said, when a Welshman was brought before
him for the murder of a priest, "he has killed my enemy." Such were the
political conditions, when at Oxford a woman of the town was found
murdered in circumstances which pointed to the guilt of a student. The
citizens were eager for vengeance, and they took the matter into their
own hands (1209).
The offender had fled, but the mayor and burgesses invading his hostel
arrested two innocent students who lodged in the same house. They
hurried them outside the walls of Oxford, and, with the ready assent of
John, who was then at Woodstock, hung them forthwith. This was a
defiance of ecclesiastical liberty. For it was a chief principle of the
Church that all clerks and scholars, as well as all higher officials in
the hierarchy, should be subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone.
For this principle Becket had died, and in defence of this principle a
quarrel now arose between the University and the town which bade fair to
end in the withdrawal of the former altogether from Oxford. In protest
the masters and scholars migrated from the town, and transferred their
schools to Paris, to Reading and to Cambridge. It is, indeed, to this
migration that the Studium Generale on the banks of the Cam may owe its
existence.
The halls of Oxford were now deserted, the schools were empty. So they
remained as long as John's quarrel with the pope endured. But when the
King had knelt before the Papal Legate, Pandulf (1213), and sworn fealty
to the pope, the Church succeeded in bringing the citizens, who had no
doubt found their pockets severely affected in the meantime, to their
senses. A Legatine ordinance of the following year is the University's
first charter of privilege. The citizens performed public penance;
stripped and barefooted they went daily to the churches, carrying
scourges in their hands and chaunting penitential psalms. When they had
thus obtained absolution, and the University had returned, the Legate
issued a decree by which the townsmen were bound in future, if they
arrested a clerk, to deliver him up on demand to the Bishop of Lincoln,
the Archdeacon of Oxford or his official, to the Chancellor set over the
scholars by the bishop, or some other authorised representative of the
episcopal power. And thus was established that immunity from lay
jurisdiction which, under slightly different conditions, is still
enjoyed by every resident member of the University.
This is the first allusion in any authentic document to the existence of
the chancellorship.
Among the minor penalities to which the townsmen were now subjected was
the provision that for ten years one-half the rent of existing hostels
and schools was to be altogether remitted, and for ten years more rents
were to remain as already taxed before the secession by the joint
authority of the town and the masters. Further, the town was forever to
pay an annual sum of fifty-two shillings to be distributed among poor
scholars on the feast of S. Nicholas, the patron of scholars, and at the
same time to feast a hundred poor scholars on bread and beer, pottage
and flesh or fish. Victuals were to be sold at a reasonable rate, and an
oath to the observance of these provisions was to be taken by fifty of
the chief burgesses, and to be annually renewed at the discretion of the
bishop. The payment of the fine was transferred by an agreement with the
town to the Abbey of Eynsham in 1219, and by an ordinance of Bishop
Grossetete the money was applied to the foundation of a "chest."
The size and importance of the University was shortly afterwards
increased by a somewhat similar disturbance which took place in Paris
(1229). A brawl developed into a serious riot, in which several
scholars, innocent or otherwise, were killed by the Provost of Paris and
his archers. The masters and students failing to obtain redress departed
from Paris in anger. Henry seized this opportunity of humiliating the
French Monarchy by fomenting the quarrel and at the same time inviting
"the masters and the University of scholars at Paris" to come to study
in England, where they should receive ample liberty and privileges. A
migration to Oxford was the result of this royal invitation, which was
highly appreciated not only by the English students at Paris but also by
many foreigners. Two years later the King was able to boast that Oxford
was frequented by a vast number of students, coming from various places
over the sea, as well as from all parts of Britain.
The University remained till well towards the end of the thirteenth
century a customary rather than a legal or statutory corporation. And in
its customs it was a reproduction of the Society of Masters at Paris.
The privileges and customs of Paris were, in fact, the type from which
the customs and privileges of all the Universities which were now being
founded in Europe were reproduced, and according to which they were
confirmed by bulls and charters. Thus in 1246 Innocent V. enjoined
Grossetete to see that in Oxford nobody exercised the office of teaching
except after he had qualified according to the custom of the Parisians.
Whilst then the idea of a University was undoubtedly borrowed from the
Continent, and Oxford, so far as her organisation was concerned, was
framed on the Continental models, yet the establishment of a University
in England was an event of no small importance. Teaching was thereby
centralised, competition promoted, and intellectual speculation
stimulated. At a University there was more chance of intellectual
freedom than in a monastic school.
If such was the origin of the University, Alfred did not found it, still
less did he found University College.
University College, "the Hall of the University," may undoubtedly claim
with justice to be the earliest University endowment. But it was at one
time convenient to that College, in the course of a lawsuit in which
their case was a losing one, to claim, when forgeries failed them, to be
a royal foundation. The Alfred myth was to hand, and they used it with
unblushing effrontery and a confident disregard of historical facts and
dates. Their impudence for the time being fulfilled its purpose, and it
also left its mark on the minds of men. The tradition still lingers. The
College Chapel was dedicated at the end of the fourteenth century to S.
Cuthbert, Durham's Saint, but the seventeenth-century Bidding Prayer
still perpetuates the venerable fiction, and first among the benefactors
of the "College of the great Hall of the University," the name of King
Alfred is cited. In 1872 the College even celebrated, by the English
method of a dinner, the supposed thousandth anniversary of its
existence. At that dinner the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Lowe
(Lord Sherbrooke), wittily upheld the tradition of his College. For, he
argued, if Oxford was in the hands of the Danes at the time when Alfred
founded the University, that fact only strengthened their case. For King
Alfred was a man so much in advance of his age that it is not surprising
to find that he had anticipated the modern political doctrine, which
teaches us that the surest way to earn popularity, is to give away the
property of our opponents.
[Illustration: University College]
The story of the lawsuit will be found to be instructive if
discreditable.
In 1363 the College by two purchases obtained possession of considerable
property in land and houses which had been the estate of Philip Gonwardy
and Joan his wife. After the College had been in possession some
fourteen years, however, a certain Edmund Francis and Idonea his wife
came forward to dispute the right to it. They maintained that Philip
Gonwardy and his wife had had no true title to the estate, for it, or
part of it, had been bequeathed to them by one John Goldsmith in 1307.
And he, they asserted, had by a later document settled the same property
upon them. The case was tried at Westminster; transferred to Oxford,
where the College obtained a verdict in their favour, and then taken
back on appeal to Westminster.
It was at this point that the document known as the French petition--it
is written in the Court French of the day--was filed. Finding,
apparently, that the case was going against them, the College determined
to use the myth about Alfred, claim to be a royal foundation and thus
throw the matter, and their liberties along with it, into the King's
hands, leaving the case to be decided by the Privy Council.
"To their most excellent and most dread and most sovereign Lord the
King," so ran the petition, "and to his most sage council, shew his
poor orators, the master and scholars of his College, called Mickle
University Hall in Oxenford, which College was first founded by
your noble progenitor, King Alfred, whom may God assoil, for the
maintenance of twenty-six divines for ever; that whereas one Edmund
Francis, citizen of London, hath in virtue of his great power
commenced a suit in the King's Bench, against some of the tenants
of the said masters and scholars, for certain lands and tenements,
with which the College was endowed ... and from time to time doth
endeavour to destroy and utterly disinherit your said College of
the rest of its endowment.... That it may please your most
sovereign and gracious Lord King, since you are our true founder
and advocate, to make the aforesaid parties appear before your very
sage council, to show in evidences upon the rights of the
aforesaid matter, so that upon account of the poverty of your said
orators your said College be not disinherited, having regard, most
gracious Lord, that the noble saints, John of Beverley, Bede, and
Richard Armacan (Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh), and many other
famous doctors and clerks, were formerly scholars in your said
College, and commenced divines therein, and this for God's sake,
and as a deed of charity."
This deed, then, and others, these mere children in litigation did
deliberately forge, attaching the Chancellor's seal thereto, in order to
substantiate their absurd, but profitable, pretension.
The device was successful for a time, although the very petition
contains within itself glaring historical contradictions, which either
show supreme ignorance on the part of the masters and scholars or a
cynical assumption of the historical ignorance of lawyers. If the
College was founded by King Alfred who came to the throne in 872, it
would seem a little unwise to instance as famous scholars of that
foundation "noble Saints" like John of Beverley, who was Archbishop of
York in 705, and the venerable Bede who died in 735.
As to the real founder of University College all the evidence points to
William, Archdeacon of Durham, who is mentioned as one of the five
distinguished English scholars who left Paris in 1229, in consequence of
the riots between the townsfolk and the University. Henry's invitation
to the Paris masters to come and settle at Oxford was immediately
accepted by the other four. Their example was probably soon followed by
William, after a sojourn at Angers. He was appointed Rector of
Wearmouth, and is said to have "abounded in great revenues, but was
gaping after greater." Some litigation with the Bishop of Durham led him
to appeal to the Papal Court. His appeal was successful, but it availed
him little, for on his journey home he died at Rouen (1249). His bones
are said by Skelton to lie in the Chapel of the Virgin in the Cathedral
there. He left 310 marks in trust to the University to invest for the
benefit and support of a certain number of masters. It was actually the
first endowment of its kind, but it is to Alan Basset, who died about
1243, that the credit of providing the first permanent endowment for an
Oxford scholar is due. For he conceived the idea of combining a
scholarship with a Chantry. He left instructions in his will in
accordance with which his executors arranged with the Convent of
Bicester for the payment of eight marks a year to two chaplains, who
should say mass daily for the souls of the founder and his wife, and at
the same time study in the schools of Oxford or elsewhere.
This was a step in the direction of founding a College, and indeed the
original plan of William was hardly more imposing.
The University placed Durham's money in a "Chest," and used it partly on
their own business and partly in loans to others, barons in the Barons'
War for instance. Such loans were seldom repaid, and only 210 marks
remained. This sum was expended in purchasing houses. The first house
bought (1253) by the University was at the corner of School Street and
St Mildred's Lane (_tenementum angulare in vico scholarum_).
The site of this the first property held by the University for
educational purposes[15] is now included in the front, the noisy,
over-decorated front, of Brasenose College. It was called, naturally
enough, first the Hall of the University and afterwards the little Hall
of the University. A second purchase was made in 1255, when a tenement
called Drogheda Hall, the then first house in the High Street on the
north side, was bought. It stands almost opposite to the present Western
Gate of the College. Brasenose Hall was the next purchase under
William's bequest (1262), and (1270) a quit rent of fifteen shillings,
charged on two houses in S. Peter's parish, was the last. William of
Durham had not founded a College. There is nothing to show that the
purchase of houses by the University was originally made with any other
object than that of securing a sound investment of the trust money.
There is nothing to show, that is, either that the houses were bought
originally and specifically as habitations for the pensioned masters
(though they _may_ have lodged there), or that it was originally
intended, either by the University or the founder, that they should form
a community.
Statutes were not granted to the masters admitted to the benefits of
this foundation until the year 1280, and by that time a precedent had
been created. From the year 1280, then, may be dated the incorporation
of what is now known as University College. A very small society of poor
masters were, according to the revised plan, to live together on the
bounty of William of Durham and devote themselves to the study of
theology. And this idea of association was evidently adopted from the
rule for Merton Hall laid down by Merton six years before. The revenue
from the fund increased rapidly, so that by 1292, the society was
increased from "four poor masters" to one consisting of two classes of
scholars, the seniors receiving six and eightpence a year more than the
juniors, and having authority over them. Other clerks of good character,
not on the foundation, were permitted to hire lodgings in the Hall,
prototypes of the modern commoner. Funds and benefactions accrued to the
Hall. A library was built, and the society gradually enlarged. Members
of it were enjoined to live like Saints and to speak Latin. In the
election of new Fellows a preference was given to those "born nearest to
the parts of Durham." And a graduated fine was imposed, according to
which a scholar who insulted another in private was to pay a shilling,
before his fellows two shillings, and if in the street, in church or
recreation ground, six and eightpence. For the administration of the
College funds a bursar was annually appointed, whose accounts were
subsequently approved and signed by the Chancellor. This practice of
University supervision was maintained till 1722.
Yet another body of statutes was promulgated in 1311. The study of
theology and the preference given to those who hailed from Durham were
emphasised in accordance with the founder's wishes. The Senior Fellow
was required to be ordained, but any Fellow who was appointed to a
benefice of five marks a year now forfeited his election. This latter
regulation, which occurs in substance in most of the fourteenth century
foundations--by the Statutes of Queens, indeed, a Fellow who refused a
benefice forfeited his fellowship--shows that fellowships were intended
not as mere endowments of learning but as stepping-stones to preferment.
It does not, on the other hand, show that the founders did not
contemplate the existence of life-fellows. I think that it is tolerably
clear Walter de Merton did. The office of Master of the College grew out
of the position of the Senior Fellow; his authority was asserted by new
statutes given in 1476.
It was in 1332 that the scholars of William of Durham moved from the
corner house on the north side of the High Street, if that was where
they abode, to the site of their present College, bounded by Logic Lane
and Grove Street, and forming in the southern curve of the High Street,
one of the most effective and noble features in that splendid sweep
which embraces, on the other side, Queen's, All Souls', St Mary's,
Brasenose, and All Saints'.
The society had received large benefactions from a generous donor,
Philip Ingleberd of Beverley, and they now purchased Spicer's (formerly
Durham's) Hall, the first house in St Mary's parish, which stood near
the present western gateway of University College. Further benefactions
made further purchases possible. White Hall and Rose Hall in Kybald
Street were bought, and Lodelowe Hall, on the east of Spicer's Hall
(1336). Spicer's Hall soon came to be known as the University Hall; the
hall next to it, when acquired, was distinguished as Great University
Hall. The reversion to the remainder of the High Street frontage,
between Lodelowe Hall and the present Logic Lane, was not secured till
1402, when the munificence of Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, enabled
the society to extend their property and their numbers. The tenements
thus acquired were called Little University Hall and the Cock on the
Hoop. The next purchase of the College involved them in that lawsuit
which has had so curious a result upon the imaginations of its
subsequent members.
Thus, then, the foundation of William had become a College, "the first
daughter of Alma Mater." Being the first "Hall" acquired by the
University it came to be spoken of as "The Hall of the University," and
the members of the foundation, as "Scholars of University Hall." Their
proper title, "Scholars of the Hall of William of Durham," gradually
fell out of use. Strangers to the University system usually find
themselves confused by the relations of the University and the Colleges.
The University, then, let it be said, is a corporation existing apart
from the Colleges; the Colleges are separate incorporated foundations,
independent though practically subordinate to it.
The old thatched halls of wood and clay were used till it became
necessary to rebuild in 1632. A smaller version of the seventeenth
century quadrangle then constructed was finished in 1719.
For in 1714 had died Dr John Radcliffe, a famous and witty doctor, whose
skill had secured him the post of court physician and whose wit had
deprived him of it. For he offended William III. by remarking to that
dropsical monarch, that he would not have his two legs for his two
kingdoms. It had long been known that the worthy doctor intended to make
his College and his University his heirs. His munificence was rewarded
by a public funeral of unexampled splendour and a grave in the nave of
St Mary's. The bulk of his fortune he devoted to specific purposes
benefiting the University, but he left a large sum to University College
"for the
[Illustration: Radcliffe Library from Brasenose Quad.]
building of the front down to Logic Lane, answerable to the front
already built, and for building the master's lodging therein, and
chambers for his two travelling Fellows," whom he endowed. The Radcliffe
Quadrangle commemorates his benefaction to his College; the Radcliffe
Infirmary (Woodstock Road, 1770), the Radcliffe Observatory, built
1772-1795, on a site given by George, Duke of Marlborough; and last, but
not least the Radcliffe Library, or as it is more usually termed the
Camera Bodleiana (James Gibbs, architect, 1737-1749) stand forth in the
city as the noble monuments of his intelligent munificence.
The magnificent dome of the latter forms one of the most striking
features among Oxford buildings.[16]
* * * * *
Neither the University of Oxford nor University College can justly claim
to be connected with the name of Alfred the Great. But there are relics
of Alfred and Alfred's time preserved at Oxford which should be of
interest to the visitor. In the Bodleian may be seen certain coins which
have led historians to assume that Alfred set up a mint at Oxford, and
to argue from this supposed fact that his rule was firmly established
over Mercia. The coins in question, which were all found in Lancashire,
are variations of the type bearing these letters;--
_Obverse._ ORSNA, then in another line ELFRED, and in the third
line FORDA. _Reverse_ BERNV + + + ALDNº
It is assumed that these words indicate that Bernwald was a moneyer who
was authorised by Alfred to strike coins at Oxford. But why Oxford
should be written Orsnaforda and why, instead of the usual practice of
abbreviation, the name of the place of the mint should have been written
wrongly and at excessive length is not explained. I do not think there
is any sufficient reason to connect the Orsnaforda coins with Oxford at
all.
Whether Alfred's sceptre held sway over Mercia so that it can be stated
definitely that "Wessex and Mercia were now united as Wessex and Kent
had long been united by their allegiance to the same ruler" (Green) or
not, the fact is not to be deduced from an imaginary mint at Oxford, any
more than from the forged documents in the archives of University
College or from the presence of what is known as King Alfred's jewel in
the University galleries, (Beaumont Street).
This beautiful specimen of gold enamelled work was found in
Somersetshire in 1693 and added to the Ashmolean collections a little
later. The inscription "Aelfred mee heht gevvrcan" (Alfred ordered me to
be made) which it bears has earned it its title.
* * * * *
The promotion of Edmund Rich, the Abingdon lad who was first made an
archbishop and then a saint, to the degree of Master of Arts, is the
earliest mention of that degree in Oxford. The story of his life there
gives the best illustration we have of the early years and growth of the
University.
In the ardour of knowledge and the passionate purity of youth he vowed
himself to a life of study and chastity. In the spirit of mystical piety
which was ever characteristic of him, secretly as a boy he took Mary for
his bride. Perhaps at eventide, when the shadows were gathering in the
Church of S. Mary and the crowd of teachers and students were breaking
up from the rough schools which stood near the western doors of the
church in the cemetery without, he approached the image of the Virgin
and slipped on Mary's finger a gold ring. On that ring was engraved
"that sweet Ave with which the Angel at the Annunciation had hailed the
Virgin." Devout and studious, the future saint was not without boyish
tastes. He paid more attention to the music and singing at S. Mary's, we
are told, than to the prayers. On one occasion he was slipping out of
the church before the service was finished in order to join the other
students at their games. But at the north door a divine apparition bade
him return, and from that time his devotion grew more fervent. It is
recorded with astonishment by his biographers as a mark of his singular
piety, that when he had taken his degree as Master he would attend mass
each day before lecturing, contrary to the custom of the scholars of
that time, and although he was not yet in orders. For this purpose he
built a chapel to the Virgin in the parish where he then lived. His
example was followed by his pupils. "So study," such was the maxim he
loved to impress upon them, "as if you were to live for ever; so live as
if you were to die to-morrow." How little the young scholar, to whom
Oxford owes her first introduction to the Logic of Aristotle, cared for
the things of this world is shown by his contemptuous treatment of the
fees which the students paid to the most popular of their teachers. He
would throw down the money on the window-sill, and there burying it in
the dust which had accumulated, "dust to dust, ashes to ashes," he would
cry, celebrating its obsequies. And there the fee would lie till a
student in joke or earnest theft ran off with it. So for six years he
lectured in Arts. But even knowledge brought its troubles. The Old
Testament, which with the copy of the Decretals long formed his sole
library, frowned down upon a love of secular learning, from which Edmund
found it hard to wean himself. The call came at last. He was lecturing
one day in Mathematics, when the form of his dead mother appeared to
him. "My son," she seemed to say, "what art thou studying? What are
these strange diagrams over which thou porest so intently?"
She seized Edmund's right hand, and in the palm drew three circles,
within which she wrote the names of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost.
"Be these thy diagrams henceforth, my son," she cried. And so directed,
the student devoted himself henceforth to Theology.
This story, Green observes, admirably illustrates the latent opposition
between the spirit of the University and the spirit of the Church. The
feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediæval world were both
alike threatened by the new training. Feudalism rested on local
isolation. The University was a protest against this isolation of man
from man. What the Church and Empire had both aimed at and both failed
in, the knitting of Christian nations together into a vast commonwealth,
the Universities of the time actually did.
On the other hand, the spirit of intellectual inquiry promoted by the
Universities, ecclesiastical bodies though they were, threatened the
supremacy of the Church. The sudden expansion of the field of education
diminished the importance of those purely ecclesiastical and theological
studies, which had hitherto absorbed the whole intellectual energies of
mankind. For, according to the monastic ideal, theology was confined to
mere interpretation of the text of Scripture and the dicta of the
Fathers or Church. To this narrow science all the sciences were the
handmaids. They were regarded as permissible only so far as they
contributed to this end. But the great outburst of intellectual
enthusiasm in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries created a momentary
revolution in these matters. The whole range of science as revealed by
the newly discovered treasures of Greek thinkers and Roman Jurists was
now thrown open to the student. And this faint revival of physical
science, this temporary restoration of classical literature, a
re-discovery as it were of an older and a greater world, and contact
with a larger, freer life, whether in mind, in society or politics,
introduced a spirit of scepticism, of doubt, of denial, into the realms
of unquestionable belief.
But the Church was alive to the danger. Fiercely she fought
[Illustration: Garden Front
S John's College]
the tide of opposition, and at last won back the allegiance of the
Universities. Through the Schoolmen ecclesiasticism once more triumphed,
and the reign of Theology was resumed. Soon scholasticism absorbed the
whole mental energy of the student world. The old enthusiasm for
knowledge died down; science was discredited, and literature in its
purer forms became extinct.
The scholastic philosophy, so famous for several ages, has passed away
and been forgotten. We cannot deny that Roscelin, Anselm, Abelard, Peter
Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham were
men of acute and even profound understanding, the giants of their own
generation. But all their inquiries after truth were vitiated by two
insurmountable obstacles--the authority of Aristotle and the authority
of the Church. For Aristotle, whom the scholastics did not understand,
and who had been so long held at bay as the most dangerous foe of
mediæval faith, whom none but Anti-Christ could comprehend, was now
turned, by the adoption of his logical method in the discussion and
definition of theological dogma, into its unexpected ally. It was this
very method which led to that "unprofitable subtlety and curiosity"
which Lord Bacon notes as the vice of the scholastic philosophy.
Yet the scholastic mode of dispute, admitting of no termination and
producing no conviction, was sure in the end to cause scepticism, just
as the triviality of the questions on which the schoolmen wasted their
amazing ingenuity was sure at last to produce disgust. What could be
more trifling than a disquisition about the nature of angels, their
means of conversing, and the morning and evening states of their
understanding, unless perhaps it were a subtle and learned dispute as to
whether a chimæra, buzzing in a vacuum, can devour second intentions?
John of Salisbury observed of the Parisian dialecticians in his own
time, that after several years absence he found them not a step
advanced, and still employed in urging and parrying the same arguments.
His observation was applicable to the succeeding centuries. After three
or four hundred years the scholastics had not untied a single knot or
added one equivocal truth to the domain of philosophy. Then men
discovered at last that they had given their time for the promise of
wisdom, and had been cheated in the bargain. At the revival of letters
the pretended science had few advocates left, save among the prejudiced
or ignorant adherents of established systems.
And yet, in the history of education and of the historical events which
education directs, the discussions of the schoolmen hold a place not
altogether contemptible. Their disputes did at least teach men to
discuss and to define, to reason and to inquire. And thus was promoted
the critical spirit which was boldly to challenge the rights of the
Pope, and to receive and profit by the great disclosures of knowledge in
a future age.
Of the early schools and the buildings which sprang into existence to
mark the first beginnings of the University, no trace remains.
The church of S. Giles in north Oxford, which, as we have seen, is the
church claimed by Rous as the S. Mary's of his imaginary University in
Beaumont Fields, is the only architectural illustration of this period.
It was consecrated by S. Hugh, the great Bishop of Lincoln, and is of
interest as affording one of the earliest examples of lancet work in
England (1180-1210?). The high placed windows in the north wall of the
nave are Norman; the tower is in the Transition style.