CHAPTER IV

THE COMING OF THE FRIARS

Scarcely had the University established itself in Oxford, when an

immigration into that city took place, which was destined to have no

inconsiderable influence on its history. Bands of men began to arrive

and to settle there, members of new orders vowed to poverty and

ignorance, whose luxury in after years was to prove a scandal, and whose

learning was to control the whole development of thought.

In the thirteenth century the power of the priesthood over Christendom

was at its height, but it was losing its religious hold over the people.

The whole energy of the Church seemed to be absorbed in politics;

spiritually the disuse of preaching, the decline of the monastic orders

into rich landowners, the non-residence and ignorance of parish priests

combined to rob her of her proper influence. Grossetete issued

ordinances which exhorted the clergy, but in vain, not to haunt taverns,

gamble or share in drinking bouts, and in the rioting and debauchery of

the barons.

It was in these circumstances that Dominic and Francis, men so strangely

different in other ways, were moved to found orders of New Brethren, who

should meet false sanctity by real sanctity; preaching friars who should

subsist on the alms of the poor and carry the Gospel to them. The older

monasticism was reversed; the solitary of the cloister was exchanged for

the preacher, the monk for the friar. Everywhere the itinerant

preachers, whose fervid appeal, coarse wit and familiar stories brought

religion into the market-place, were met with an outburst of

enthusiasm. On their first coming to Oxford, the Dominicans or Black

Friars were received with no less enthusiasm than elsewhere.

Lands were given to them in Jewry; buildings and a large school were

erected for them by benefactors like Walter Malclerk, Bishop of

Carlisle, and Isabel de Boulbec, Countess of Oxford, or the friendly

Canons of St Frideswide. So greatly did they flourish that they soon

outgrew their accommodation. They sold their land and buildings, and

with the proceeds built themselves a house and schools and church "on a

pleasant isle in the south suburbs," which was granted them by Henry

III. (1259). The site of their new habitation at the end of Speedwell

Street (Preachers' Lane) is indicated by the Blackfriars Road and

Blackfriars Street in the parish of St Ebbe. Their library was large and

full of books; the church was dedicated to S. Nicholas. It was situated

near Preachers' Bridge, which spanned the Trill Mill Stream.

The Grey Friars followed hard on the heels of the Black. For in the year

1224 nine Franciscans arrived at Dover. Five of them went to Canterbury,

four to London, whence two of them made their way to Oxford--Richard of

Ingeworth and Richard of Devon. Their journey was eventful. Night drew

on as they approached Oxford. The waters were high and they were fain to

seek shelter in a grange belonging to the monks of Abingdon "in a most

vast and solitary wood" (Culham?).

"Humbly knocking at the door, they desired the monks for God's love

to give them entertainment for that night. The porter who came to

the door looked upon them (having dirty faces, ragged vestments,

and uncouth speech) to be a couple of jesters or counterfeits. The

Prior caused them to be brought in that they might quaff it and

show sport to the monks. But the friars said they were mistaken in

them; for they were not such kind of people, but the servants of

God, and the professors of an apostolic life. Whereupon the

expectation of the monks being thus frustrated, they vilely spurned

at them and caused them to be thrust out of the gate. But one of

the young monks had compassion on them and said to the porter: 'I

desire thee for the love thou bearest me that when the Prior and

monks are gone to rest thou wouldest conduct those poor people into

the hayloft, and there I shall administer to them food.' Which

being according to his desire performed, he carried to them bread

and drink, and remaining some time with them, bade them at length a

good night, and devoutly commended himself to their prayers.

"No sooner had he left them, solacing their raging stomachs with

refreshment, but he retired to his rest. But no sooner had sleep

seized on him, than he had a dreadful dream which troubled him

much. He saw in his sleep Christ sitting upon His throne calling

all to judgment; at length with a terrible voice He said: 'Let the

patrons of this place be called to me.' When they and their monks

appeared, came a despised poor man in the habit of a minor friar,

and stood opposite them saying to Christ these words: 'O just

Judge, the blood of the minor friars cryeth to thee, which was the

last night by those monks standing there endangered to be spilt;

for they, when they were in great fear of perishing by the fury of

hunger and wild beasts, did deny them lodging and

sustenance--those, O Lord, who have leaved all for thy sake and are

come hither to win souls for which thou dying hast redeemed--have

denied that which they would not to jesters.' These words being

delivered, Christ with a dreadful voice said to the Prior: 'Of what

order art thou?' He answered that he was of the order of S.

Benedict. Then Christ, turning to S. Benedict said, 'Is it true

that he speaks?' S. Benedict answered, 'Lord, he and his companions

are overthrowers of my religion, for I have given charge in my rule

that the Abbot's table should be free for guests, and now these

have denied those things that were but necessary for them.' Then

Christ, upon this complaint, commanded that the Prior before

mentioned should immediately be hanged on the elm-tree before the

cloister. Afterwards the sacrist and cellarer being examined did

undergo the same death also. These things being done, Christ turned

Himself to the young monk that had compassion on the said friars,

asking him of what order he was. Who thereupon, making a pause and

considering how his brethren were handled, said at length, 'I am of

the order that this poor man is.' Then Christ said to the poor man,

whose name was as yet concealed, 'Francis, is it true that he

saith, that he is of your order?' Francis answered, 'He is mine, O

Lord, he is mine; and from henceforth I receive him as one of my

order.' At which very time as those words were speaking, Francis

embraced the young monk so close that, being thereupon awakened

from his sleep, he suddenly rose up as an amazed man; and running

with his garments loose about him to the Prior to tell him all the

passages of his dream found him in his chamber almost suffocated in

his sleep. To whom crying out with fear, and finding no answer from

him, ran to the other monks, whom also he found in the same case.

Afterwards the said young monk thought to have gone to the friars

in the hayloft; but they fearing the Prior should discover them,

had departed thence very early. Then speeding to the Abbot of

Abingdon, told him all whatsoever had happened. Which story

possessing him for a long time after with no small horror, as the

aforesaid dream did the said young monk, did both (I am sure the

last) with great humility and condescension come afterwards to

Oxon, when the said friars had got a mansion there, and took upon

them the habit of S. Francis."

This quaint story of the first coming of the Grey Friars to Oxford

illustrates very plainly the hostility between the old orders of the

friars and the new; the opposition of the parochial priesthood to the

spiritual energy of the mendicant preachers, who, clad in their coarse

frock of grey serge, with a girdle of rope round their waist, wandered

barefooted as missionaries over Asia, battled with heresies in Italy and

Gaul, lectured in the Universities and preached and toiled among the

poor.

The Grey Friars were hospitably received by the Black, till Richard le

Mercer, a wealthy burgess, let them a house in St Ebbe's parish,

"between the church and water-gate (South-gate), in which many honest

bachelors and noble persons entered and lived with them." Perhaps it was

this increase in their numbers which compelled them to leave their first

abode somewhere by the east end of Beef Lane, and to hire a house with

ground attached from Richard the Miller. This house lay between the wall

and Freren Street (Church Street). All sorts and conditions of men

flocked to hear them. Being well satisfied, it is said, as to their

honest and simple carriage and well-meaning as also with their doctrine,

they began to load them with gifts and to make donations to the city

for their use. One of their benefactors, Agnes, the wife of Guy, for

instance, gave them "most part of that ground which was afterwards

called Paradise" (_cf._ Paradise Square). A small church was built, and

bishops and abbots relinquishing their dignities and preferments became

Minorites. They scorned not "the roughness of the penance and the robe,"

but "did with incomparable humility carry upon their shoulders the coul

and the hod, for the speedier finishing this structure." The site chosen

by the Grey Friars for their settlement is not without significance. The

work of the friars was physical as well as moral. Rapid increase of the

population huddled within the narrow circle of the walls had resulted

here as elsewhere in overcrowding, which accentuated the insanitary

conditions of life. A gutter running down the centre of unpaved streets

was supposed to drain the mess of the town as well as the slops thrown

from the windows of the houses. Garbage of all sorts collected and

rotted there. Within the houses the rush-strewn floors collected a foul

heritage of scraps and droppings. Personal uncleanliness, encouraged by

the ascetic prohibitions and directions of a morbid monasticism, which,

revolting from the luxury of the Roman baths and much believing in the

necessity of mortifying the flesh, regarded washing as a vice and held

that a dirty shirt might cover a multitude of sins, was accentuated by

errors of diet, and had become the habit of high and low. Little wonder

that fever or plague, or the more terrible scourge of leprosy, festered

in the wretched hovels of the suburbs of Oxford as of every town. Well,

it was to haunts such as these that S. Francis had pointed his

disciples. At London they settled in the shambles of Newgate; at Oxford

they chose the swampy suburb of S. Ebbe's. Huts of mud and timber, as

mean as the huts around them, rose within the rough fence and ditch that

bounded the Friary; for the Order of St Francis fought hard, at first,

against the desire for fine buildings and the craving for knowledge

which were the natural tendencies of many of the brethren. In neither

case did the will of their founder finally carry the day.

"Three things," said Friar Albert, Minister General, "tended to the

exaltation of the Order--bare feet, coarse garments, and the rejecting

of money." At first the Oxford Franciscans were zealous in all those

respects. We hear of Adam Marsh refusing bags of gold that were sent

him; we hear of two of the brethren returning from a Chapter held at

Oxford at Christmas-time, singing as they picked their way along the

rugged path, over the frozen mud and rigid snow, whilst the blood lay in

the track of their naked feet, without their being conscious of it. Even

from the robbers and murderers who infested the woods near Oxford the

barefoot friars were safe.

But it was not long before they began to fall away from "the Rule," and

to accumulate both wealth and learning. Under the ministry of Agnellus

and his successor the tendency to acquire property was rigorously

suppressed, but under Haymo of Faversham (1238) a different spirit began

to prevail. Haymo preferred that "the friars should have ample areas and

should cultivate them, that they might have the fruits of the earth at

home, rather than beg them from others." And under his successor they

gained a large increase of territory. By a deed dated Nov. 22, 1244,

Henry III. granted them

"that they might enclose the street that lies under the wall from

the Watergate in S. Ebbe's to the little postern in the wall

towards the castle, but so that a wall with battlements, like to

the rest of the wall of Oxford, be made about the dwelling,

beginning at the west side of Watergate, and reaching southward to

the bank of the Thames, and extending along the bank westward as

far as the land of the Abbot of Bec in the parish of S. Bodhoc, and

then turning again to the northward till it joins with the old wall

of the borough, by the east side of the small postern." In 1245 he

made a further grant. "We have given the Friars Minor our island in

the Thames, which we bought of Henry, son of Henry Simeon, granting

them power to build a bridge over the arm of the Thames (Trill

stream) which runs between the island and their houses, and enclose

the island with a wall."

When it was completed, then, the Convent of the Grey Friars could

compare favourably with any convent or college in Oxford, except perhaps

S. Frideswide's or Osney. On the east side of it, where the main

entrance lay, at the junction of the present Littlegate Street and

Charles Street, was the road leading from Watergate to Preacher's

Bridge; on the South side, Trill Mill stream; on the West, the groves

and gardens of Paradise; on the North, as far as West-gate, ran the City

wall.

"Their buildings were stately and magnificent; their church large

and decent; and their refectory, cloister and libraries all

proportionable thereunto."

The traditional site of this church is indicated by Church Place as it

is called to-day. The cloisters probably lay to the south of the church,

round "Penson's Gardens."

As the Franciscans fell away by degrees from the ideal of poverty, so

also they succumbed to the desire of knowledge. "I am your breviary, I

am your breviary," S. Francis had cried to a novice who had asked for a

Psalter. The true Doctors, he held, were those who with the meekness of

wisdom show forth good works for the edification of their neighbours.

But the very popularity of their preaching drove his disciples to the

study of theology. Their desire not only to obtain converts but also to

gain a hold on the thought of the age had led the friars to fasten on

the Universities. The same purpose soon led them to establish at Oxford

a centre of learning and teaching.

Their first school at Oxford was built by Agnellus of Pisa, and there he

persuaded Robert Grossetete, the great reforming bishop of Lincoln, to

lecture. Agnellus himself was a true follower of S. Francis and no great

scholar. "He never smelt of an Academy or scarce tasted of humane

learning." He was indeed much concerned at the results of Grossetete's

lectures. For one day when he entered this school to see what progress

his scholars were making in literature, he found them disputing eagerly

and making enquiries whether there was a God. The scandalised Provincial

cried out aloud in anger, "Hei mihi! Hei mihi! Fratres! Simplices

coelos penetrant, et literati disputant utrum sit Deus!" The miracles

which were afterwards reputed to be performed at the grave of this same

excellent friar caused the church of the Grey Friars to be much

frequented.

The friars now began to accumulate books and we soon find mention of two

libraries belonging to them. The nucleus of them was formed by the books

and writings of Grossetete, which he bequeathed to the brethren. And

they collected with great industry from abroad Greek, Hebrew and

mathematical writings, at that time unknown in England. The fate of this

priceless collection of books was enough to make Wood "burst out with

grief." For, when the monasteries had begun to decay, and the monks had

fallen into ways of sloth and ignorance and were become "no better than

a gang of lazy, fat-headed friars," they began to sell their books for

what they would fetch and allowed the remainder to rot in neglect.

Meanwhile the teaching of such scholars as Grossetete and Adam Marsh (de

Marisco), the first of the Order to lecture at Oxford, was not without

result. From the school of the Franciscans came forth men who earned for

the University great fame throughout Europe. Friars were sent thither to

study, not only from Scotland and Ireland, but from France and

Acquitaine, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; while many of the

Franciscan schools on the Continent drew their teachers from Oxford.

Duns Scotus and William Ockham were trained by these teachers; Roger

Bacon, the founder of modern scientific enquiry, ended his days as one

of the Order. His life, which stretched over the greater portion of the

thirteenth century, was passed for the most part at Oxford; his

aspirations and difficulties, his failures and achievements form an

epitome, as it were, of the mental history of his age.

It was only when he had spent forty years and all his fortune in

teaching and scientific research that, having gained the usual reward of

scholarship, and being bankrupt in purse, bankrupt in hope, he took the

advice of Grossetete, and became a Friar of the Order of S. Francis.

"Unheard, buried and forgotten," as a member of an Order which looked

askance on all intellectual labour not theological, he was forbidden to

publish any work under pain of forfeiture, and the penance of bread and

water. Even when he was commanded by the Pope to write, the friars were

so much afraid of the purport of his researches that they kept him in

solitude on bread and water, and would not allow him to have access even

to the few books and writings available in those days. Science, they

maintained, had already reached its perfection; the world enjoyed too

much light; why should he trouble himself about matters of which enough

was known already? For as an enquirer Bacon was as solitary as that lone

sentinel of science, the Tuscan artist in Valdarno. From the moment that

the friars settled on the Universities, scholasticism had absorbed the

whole mental energy of the student world. Theology found her only

efficient rivals in practical studies such as medicine and law.

Yet, in spite of all difficulties and hindrances, so superhuman was

Bacon's energy, and so undaunted his courage, that within fifteen months

the three great works, the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus, and the Opus

Tertium were written. If this had been true of the Opus Majus alone, and

if that work had not been remarkable for the boldness and originality of

its views, yet as a mere feat of industry and application it would have

stood almost if not quite unparalleled. For the Opus Majus was at once

the Encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.

Of the Opus Minus the only MS. of the work yet known is a fragment

preserved in the Bodleian Library (Digby, No. 218).

The amazing friar met with no reward for his labours. According to one

story, indeed, his writings only gained for him a prison from his Order.

His works were sold, allowed to rot, or nailed to the desks that they

might do no harm. For Bacon's method of study exposed him to the charge

of magic. It was said that he was in alliance with the Evil One, and the

tradition arose that through spiritual agency he made a brazen head and

imparted to it the gift of speech, and that these magical operations

were wrought by him while he was a student at Brazen Nose Hall.

Necromancy, you see, _was_ practised by the more daring students, for

was there not a certain clerk in Billyng Hall who, when he had summoned

the Devil into his presence by his art, observed with astonishment that

he did reverence when a priest carrying the sacrament passed without.

"Thereupon the student was much disturbed and came to the conclusion

that God was much the greater and that Christ should be his Lord...."

And later, was not Dr Thomas Allen of Gloucester Hall, the astrologer

and mathematician to whom Bodley left his second best gown and cloak--a

common sort of bequest in those days--suspected by reason of his

figuring and conjuring, so that his servitor found a ready audience

when, wishing to impose upon Freshmen and simple people, he used to say

that sometimes he would meet the spirits coming up his master's stairs

like bees?

Apart from the tradition of the Brazen Nose, Bacon's long residence in

Oxford left other marks on the nomenclature of the place. Wood tells us

that in his day a fragment of the ruined Friary was pointed out as the

room where the great wizard had been wont to pursue his studies. And at

a later time tradition said that Friar Bacon was wont to use as an

observatory the story built over the semi-circular archway of the gate

on the south bridge, and it was therefore known as Friar Bacon's Study.

The little "gate-house" must have resembled Bocardo. It was leased to a

citizen named Welcome, who added a story to it, which earned it the name

of "Welcome's Folly." So the bridge came to be called Folly Bridge, and

though gate and house have disappeared, the new bridge still retains the

name.

[Illustration: Gables in Worcester College]

The Black and the Grey Friars were followed to Oxford some years later

by the White or Carmelite Friars. Nicholas de Meules or Molis, sometime

governor of the castle, gave them a house on the west side of Stockwell

Street,[17] now part of Worcester College. They would seem, like the

other Orders, soon to have forgotten their traditional austerity. Lands

accrued to them; they erected suitable buildings with planted groves and

walks upon a large and pleasant site. But not content with this, they

presently obtained from Edward II. the royal Palace of Beaumont. Thus

they presented the curious paradox of an Order of monks who derived

their pedigree in regular succession from Elijah, and trod in theory in

the footsteps of the prophets who had retired into the desert, living at

Oxford in the palace of a king.

"When King Edward I. waged war with the Scots (1304) he took with

him out of England a Carmelite friar, named Robert Baston,

accounted in his time the most famous poet of this nation,

purposely that he should write poetically of his victories. Again,

when King Edward II. maintained the same war after the death of his

father, he entertained the same Baston for the same purpose. At

length the said king encountering Robert Bruce, was forced with his

bishops to fly. In which flight Baston telling the king that if he

would call upon the Mother of God for mercy he should find favour,

he did so accordingly, with a promise then made to her that if he

should get from the hands of his enemies and find safety, he would

erect some house in England to receive the poor Carmelites.... Soon

after, Baston and some others were not wanting to persuade him to

give to the Carmelites his palace at Oxford" (1317),

where Richard Coeur de Lion had been born. Beaumont Palace, whilst it

remained in the hands of the Carmelites, was used not merely as a

convent for the habitation of twenty-four monks, but also as a place of

education for members of this Order throughout England; as well as for

seculars who lived there as "commoners." Cardinal Pole is said to have

been educated in this seminary.

The library and the church of the White Friars were unusually fine.

The Austin Friars (or Friars eremite of S. Augustine) came also to

Oxford and gradually acquired property and settled "without Smith Gate,

having Holywell Street on the south side of it and the chief part of the

ground on which Wadham College now stands on the north."

The Austin Friars were famous for their disputations in grammar, and

soon drew to themselves much of the grammatical training of the place.

They engaged also in violent philosophical controversies with the other

Orders, so that at last they were even threatened with excommunication

if they did not desist from their quarrelling. It was in their convent

that the weekly general disputations of Bachelors, known for centuries

after as "Austins," were held.

[Illustration: Wadham College, from the Gardens]

In 1262 the Penitentiarian Friars or Brothers of the Sack, so called

because they wore sackcloth, obtained from Henry III. a grant of land

which formed the parish of S. Budoc and lay to the west of the property

of the Franciscans. The Order was soon afterwards suppressed and the

Franciscans acquired their house and lands.

The brethren of the Holy Trinity also made a settlement in Oxford

(1291). Their house, afterwards known as Trinity Hall, was situated

outside the East Gate (opposite Magdalen Hall). They also acquired the

old Trinity Chapel adjoining and the surrounding land.

The Trinitarians had, besides, a chapel within the East Gate, which was

purchased by Wykeham to make room for New College.

The Crossed or Cruched Friars, after one or two moves, settled

themselves in the parish of S. Peter's in the East.

The older religious Orders were presently stimulated by the example and

the success of the friars to make some provision for the education of

their monks. But they never aimed at producing great scholars or learned

theologians. Historians of their Order and canonists who could transact

their legal business were the products which the monastic houses

desired.

A Chapter-General held at Abingdon in 1279 imposed a tax on the revenues

of all the Benedictine monasteries in the province of Canterbury with a

view to establishing a house at Oxford where students of their Order

might live and study together. John Giffard, Lord of Brimsfield, helped

them to achieve their object.

Gloucester Hall, adjoining the Palace of Beaumont, had been the private

house of Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who built it in the year

1260. It passed to Sir John Giffard, who instituted it a "nursery and

mansion-place solely for the Benedictines of S. Peter's Abbey at

Gloucester." The buildings were afterwards enlarged to provide room for

student-monks from other Benedictine abbeys. Of the lodgings thus

erected by the various abbeys for their novices, indications may still

be traced in the old monastic buildings which form the picturesque south

side of the large quadrangle of Worcester College. For over the doorways

of these hostels the half-defaced arms of different monasteries, the

griffin of Malmesbury or the Cross of Norwich, still denote their

original purpose.

[Illustration: Gateway, Worcester Gardens]

At the dissolution, the college was for a short while made the residence

of the first bishop of Oxford. After his death it was purchased by Sir

Thomas White, and by him converted into a hall for the use of his

College of S. John. Gloucester Hall, now become S. John Baptist Hall,

after a chequered career, was refounded and endowed in 1714 as Worcester

College out of the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes. In the latter half

of the eighteenth century the hall, library and chapel were built and

the beautiful gardens of "Botany Bay" were acquired.

The Benedictines also held Durham Hall, on the site of the present

Trinity College, having secured a property of about ten acres with a

frontage of about 50 feet (including Kettell Hall) on Broad Street, and

500 feet on the "Kingis hye waye of Bewmounte." It was here that Richard

de Bury, Bishop of Durham, founded the first public library in Oxford.

Bury had studied at Oxford and was the tutor of Edward III.; statesman

and churchman, he was above all

Gateway in Garden of Worcester College things a book-lover. He had more

books, it is recorded, than all the other bishops put together and,

wherever he was residing, so many books lay about his bed-chamber that

it was hardly possible to stand or move without treading upon them. In

the _Philobiblon_ the bishop describes his means and methods of

collecting books. In the course of his visitations he dug into the

disused treasures of the monasteries, and his agents scoured the

Continent for those "sacred vessels of learning." The collection of

books so made he intended for the use of scholars, not merely for

himself alone.

"We have long cherished in our heart of hearts," he writes, "the

fixed resolve to found in perpetual charity a hall in the reverend

University of Oxford, and to endow it with the necessary revenues,

for the maintenance of a number of scholars; and, moreover, to

enrich the hall with the treasures of our books, that all and every

one of them should be in common as regards their use and study, not

only to the scholars of the said hall, but by their means to all

the students of the aforesaid University for ever."

And he proceeds to lay down strict regulations based on those of the

Sorbonne, for the use and preservation of his beloved books and the

catalogue he had made of them.

Richard of Hoton, prior of Durham Monastery, had begun in 1289 the

erection of a college building to receive the young brethren from that

monastery, whom his predecessor, Hugh of Darlington, had already begun

to send to Oxford to be educated. This colony of Durham students it was

apparently Richard de Bury's intention to convert into a body corporate,

consisting of a prior and twelve brethren. And in gratitude for the

signal defeat of the Scots at Halidon Hill, Edward III. took the

proposed college under his special protection. Bury, however, died, and

died in debt, so that he himself never succeeded in founding the hall he

intended. His successor, Bishop Hatfield, took up the scheme, and

entered into an agreement with the prior and convent of Durham for the

joint endowment of a college for eight monks and eight secular

scholars. This project was completed, by agreement with his executors,

after his death (1381).

But what became of the books of the bishop and bibliophile, Richard de

Bury? Some of them, indeed, his executors were obliged to sell, but we

need not distrust the tradition which asserts that some of them at least

did come to Oxford. There, it is supposed, they remained till Durham

Hall was dissolved by Henry VIII., when they were dispersed, some going

to Duke Humphrey's library, others to Balliol College, and the remainder

passing into the hands of Dr George Owen, who purchased the site of the

dissolved college.

Whatever happened to Bury's books, it is certain that the room which

still serves as a library was built in 1417, and it may be taken to

form, happily enough, the connecting link between the old monastic house

and the modern Trinity College. Some fragments of the original "Domus et

clausura" may also survive in the Old Bursary and Common Room.

The stimulating effect of the friars upon the old Orders is shown also

by the foundation of Rewley Abbey, of which the main entrance was once

north-west of Hythe Bridge Street. Rewley (_Locus Regalis_ in North

Osney) was built for the Cistercians.

Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., who like the King had

often been at Oxford, directed in his will that a foundation should be

endowed for three secular priests to pray for his soul. His son Edmund,

however, founded an Abbey of regulars instead, Cistercian monks from

Thame. He gave sixteen acres to the west of the Abbey for walks and for

private use. To represent the twenty-one monks of the foundation,

twenty-one elm-trees were planted within the gates, and at the upper end

a tree by itself to represent the abbot. It was to this Abbey, then,

that the Cistercian monks came up to study, till Archbishop Chichele

founded S. Bernard's for them (1437). The college which Chichele founded

for the Bernardines, the "Black" Cistercians who followed the reformed

rule of S. Bernard, was built on the east side of S. Giles', "after the

same

[Illustration: Oriel College]

mode and fashion for matters of workmanship as his college of All

Souls." It is the modern college of S. John Baptist. But a large part of

the buildings date from Chichele's foundation, and the statue of S.

Bernard still stands in its original niche to recall to the modern

student the Bernardines whom he has succeeded.

The Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII., who gave the site to the

Cathedral of Christ Church. The ruins were still standing in Wood's day,

"seated within pleasant groves and environed with clear streams." Only a

fragment of a wall and doorway now remain. A memorial stone, purchased

from the site of Rewley by Hearne the Antiquarian for half a crown, is

preserved in the Ashmolean. It bears the name of Ella Longepée, the

benevolent Countess of Warwick, "who made this chapel."

In addition to the numerous parish churches and convents and colleges,

there were now innumerable smaller religious foundations in Oxford.

There was the House of Converts; there were several hospitals and

hermitages and "Ancherholds"--solitary little cells and cabins standing

in the fields and adjoining abbeys or parish churches.

[Illustration: Doorway, Rewley Abbey]

The House of Converts was founded by Henry III. (1234), and here "all

Jews and infidels converted to the Christian faith were ordained to have

sufficient maintenance." After the expulsion of the Jews and when the

number of converts began to fail, it was used as a Hall for scholars and

known as Cary's Inn. Later it was the magnificent old Inn, the Blue

Boar, which spanned the old south boundary of Little Jewry, Blue Boar,

Bear or Tresham Lane. The whole of its site is occupied by the modern

Town Hall.

The hospital of S. Bartholomew, which lay about half a mile to the east

of the city, was founded by Henry I. for leprous folk. It consisted of

one master, two healthful brethren, six lepers and a clerk. The chapel

and buildings were given in 1328 by Edward III. to Oriel College. In the

fourteenth century forty days' indulgence or pardon of sins was granted

by the Bishop of Lincoln to all who would pay their devotions at the

chapel of S. Bartholomew, on the feast of that saint, and give of their

charity to the leprous alms-folk. The result was that multitudes

resorted there, and the priests and poor people benefited considerably.

But after the Reformation the custom died out. Later, it was revived,

for charitable reasons, by the Fellows of New College. They changed the

day to May-day, and then

"after their grave and wonted manner, early in the morning, they

used to walk towards this place. They entered the chapel, which was

ready decked and adorned with the seasonable fruits of the year. A

lesson was read, and then the fellows sung a hymn or anthem of five

or six parts. Thereafter one by one they went up to the altar where

stood a certain vessel decked with Tuttyes, and therein offered a

piece of silver; which was afterwards divided among the poor men.

After leaving the chapel by paths strewn with flowers, they in the

open space, like the ancient Druids, the Apollinian offspring,

echoed and warbled out from the shady arbours harmonious melody,

consisting of several parts then most in fashion." And Wood adds

that "the youth of the city would come here every May-day with

their lords and ladies, garlands, fifes, flutes, and drums, to

acknowledge the coming in of the fruits of the year, or, as we may

say, to salute the great goddess Flora, and to attribute her all

praise with dancing and music."

The income of the hospital had previously been much augmented by the

relics which it was fortunate enough to possess. S. Edmund the

Confessor's comb, S. Bartholomew's skin, as well as his much revered

image, the bones of S. Stephen and one of the ribs of S. Andrew the

apostle, all helped to draw to this shrine without the walls the

worship and the offerings of the sick and the devout. It is difficult to

realise with what reverential awe men regarded the jaw-bone of an

ancient cenobite, the tooth or even the toe-nail of a saint or martyr.

Charms, in those days, were considered more efficacious than drugs, and

the bones of saints were the favourite remedies prescribed by the

monkish physicians. Comb your hair with this comb of Saint Edmund, then,

and you would surely be cured of frenzy or headache; apply the bones of

S. Stephen to your rheumatic joints, and your pains would disappear. So

it was most firmly believed; and faith will remove mountains. There was

a saint for every disease. To touch the keys of S. Peter or to handle a

relic of S. Hubert was deemed an effectual mode of curing madness. S.

Clare, according to monkish leechcraft, cured sore eyes; S. Sebastian

the plague, and S. Apollonia the toothache. The teeth of S. Apollonia,

by the way, were by a fortunate dispensation almost as numerous as the

complaint which she took under her charge was common.

It is said that Henry VI., disgusted at the excess of this superstition,

ordered all who possessed teeth of that illustrious saint to deliver

them to an officer appointed to receive them. Obedient crowds came to

display their saintly treasures, and lo! a ton of the veritable teeth of

S. Apollonia were thus collected together. Were her stomach, says

Fuller, proportionate to her teeth, a country would scarce afford her a

meal.

The relics at S. Bartholomew's were so highly prized that Oriel College

thought it desirable to remove them to their church of S. Mary--where

more people might have the benefit of them. S. Bartholomew's hospital

was used as a common pest-house for the plague in 1643, and shortly

after was completely demolished. The chapel fared no better, for it was

put to base uses by the Parliamentarians, and the roof, which was of

lead, was melted down to provide bullets for "the true Church Militant."

The buildings and chapel were, however, restored by the patrons, Oriel

College. If you follow the Cowley Road towards Cowley Marsh, you will

find on your left, opposite the College cricket grounds, and just short

of the Military College and barracks, a ruined building which is the old

chapel of S. Bartholomew, and contains the screen put up in the time of

the Commonwealth. The letters O. C., 1651, mark it. They stand for Oriel

College, not Oliver Cromwell, we must suppose.

There was a hospital in Stockwell Street, at the back of Beaumont

Palace; there was a hospital of Bethlehem at the north end of S. Giles'

Church and Alms-house Place in Holywell. Of hermitages we may mention

that known as S. Nicholas Chapel on the west side of South Bridge. The

hermits who lived there successively were called the hermits of Grand

Pont. They passed their lives, we are told, in continual prayer and

bodily labour--"in prayer against the vanities of the world, for poor

pilgrims and passengers that steered their course that way, receiving of

them something of benevolence for that purpose; in bodily labour by

digging their own graves and filling them up again, as also in delving

and making highways and bridges."

"Our Lady in the wall" was the name of another hermitage near S.

Frideswide's Grange, which was in great repute at one time for the

entertainment of poor pilgrims who came to be cured by the waters of S.

Edmund's well (Cowley Place).

The hospital of S. John Baptist was founded some time before the end of

the thirteenth century for the relief of poor scholars and other

miserable persons. Among the property granted or confirmed to it by

Henry III. in a very liberal charter, was the mill known as King's Mill

at the Headington end of the path now called Mesopotamia, because it

runs between the two branches of the river.

As a site for rebuilding the hospital the brethren were given (1231) the

Jews' Garden, outside the East Gate of Oxford, but it was provided that

a space should be reserved for a burial-ground for the Jews. This

ground formed part of the present site of Magdalen College, and part of

the site of the Physic Garden, which lies on the other side of the High

Street, facing the modern entrance to that college. The latter site was

that reserved for the Jews' cemetery; the hospital buildings were

erected on the other portion. When Waynflete began to enlarge and

remodel his foundation of Magdalen Hall (1456), he obtained a grant from

the king whereby the hospital (which had ceased to fulfil its purpose)

and its possessions were assigned to the President and Fellows of the

Hall.

Two years later a commission was appointed by the Pope, which confirmed

the suppression of the hospital and its incorporation in the college

which Waynflete had been licensed to found,

"whereby he proposed to change earthly things to heavenly, and

things transitory to things eternal, by providing in place of the

Hospital a College of a President, secular scholars and other

ministers for the service of God and the study of theology and

philosophy; of whom some are to teach these sciences without fee at

the cost of the College."

Of the buildings which were once part of the old hospital very little

remains. In the line of the present college, facing the street, a

blocked-up doorway to the west of the tower marks one of the entrances

to the hospital. And Wood was probably correct in saying that the

college kitchen was also part of the original fabric. There is a little

statue of a saint over a doorway inside the kitchen which appears to

bear out this statement.

* * * * *

The various religious Orders were, then, well represented at Oxford.

Their influence on the University was considerable; their relations with

it not always amicable. At first, doubtless, they did much to stimulate

mental activity, whilst the friendship which Grossetete, who as Bishop

of Lincoln exercised a sort of paternal authority over the University,

manifested towards his "faithful counsellor," Adam Marsh, and the

Franciscans in general, helped to reconcile their claims with the

interests of the University. But the University was always inclined to

be jealous of them; to regard them bitterly, and not without reason, as

grasping bodies, who were never tired of seeking for peculiar favours

and privileges and always ready to appeal to the Pope on the least

provocation. Before long, indeed, it became evident that their object

was to gain control of the University altogether. And this endeavour was

met by a very strenuous and bitter campaign against them. For, as at

Paris, the friars soon outlived their welcome, and as at Paris, it was

deemed advisable to set a limit to the number of friar doctors and to

secure the control of the University to the regular graduates.[18]

The friars who were sent up to Oxford had usually completed their eight

years' study of Arts in the Friars' schools, and were probably chosen

for the promise they had shown in the course of their earlier studies.

Their academic studies were confined to the Faculty of Theology, in its

wide mediæval sense, and of Canon Law, the hand-maid of theology. But

though the regulars were for the most part subject to the same

regulations as the secular students in these faculties, yet the Orders

were bound before long to find themselves in antagonism with the customs

of the University. The rules of the Preaching Friars forbade them to

take a degree in Arts; the University required that the student of

theology should have graduated in Arts. The issue was definitely raised

in 1253, and became the occasion of a statute, providing that for the

future no one should incept in Theology unless he had previously ruled

in Arts in some University and read one book of the Canon, or of the

Sentences, and publicly preached in the University. This statute was

challenged some fifty years later by the Dominicans, and gave rise to a

bitter controversy which involved the Mendicant Orders in much odium.

The Dominicans appealed first to the King and then to the Pope, but the

award of the arbitrators appointed upheld the statute. The right of

granting dispensations, however, or graces to incept in Theology, to

those who had not ruled in Arts, was reserved to the Chancellor and

Masters. A clause which prohibited the extortion of such "graces" by

means of the letters of influential persons was inserted, but was not

altogether effective. Certain friars who had used letters of this kind

are named in a proclamation of the year 1358. "These are the names of

the wax-doctors who seek to extort graces from the University by means

of letters of lords sealed with wax, or because they run from hard study

as wax runs from the face of fire. Be it known that such wax-doctors are

always of the Mendicant Orders, the cause whereof we have found; for by

apples and drink, as the people fables, they draw boys to their

religion, and do not instruct them after their profession, as their age

demands, but let them wander about begging, and waste the time when they

could learn in currying favour with lords and ladies."

From an educational point of view no doubt the University was right in

insisting on the preliminary training in Arts.

Roger Bacon speaks with contempt of the class that was springing up in

his day--people who studied theology and nothing but theology, "and had

never learnt anything of real value. Ignorant of all parts and sciences

of mundane philosophy, they venture on the study of philosophy which

demands all human wisdom. So they have become masters in theology and

philosophy before they were disciples."

The tendency and the danger of our modern educational system is to

specialise, not in theology but in science, without any proper previous

training in the humanities.

Whilst the University was engaged in desperate combat with the friars in

defence of its system, the regulars had succeeded in securing almost a

monopoly of learning. The same fight and the same state of affairs

prevailed at Paris. And just as at Paris in order to save the class of

secular theologians from extinction, Robert de Sorbonne established his

college (1257) for secular clerks, so now at Oxford, Walter de Merton

took the most momentous step in the history of our national education by

founding a college for twenty students of Theology or Canon Law, who not

only were not friars or monks, but who forfeited their claims to his

bounty if they entered any of the regular Orders. And that his object

was achieved the names of Walter Burley, the Doctor Perspicuus, Thomas

Bradwardine, the profound doctor, and perhaps John Wycliffe stand forth

to prove.

As an institution for the promotion of academical education under a

collegiate discipline but secular guidance, the foundation of Merton

College was the expression of a conception entirely new in England. It

deserves special consideration, for it became the model of all other

collegiate foundations, and determined the future constitution of both

the English Universities.

Walter de Merton was born at Merton in Surrey. He studied at Oxford and

won such high honour with the King that he was made Chancellor of the

kingdom. Ranged on the side opposite to that of Simon de Montford, he

was enabled perhaps by the very success of his opponent and the leisure

that so came to him, to perfect the scheme which he had early begun to

develop. At first he set aside his estates of Malden, Farleigh and

Chessington to support eight of his young kinsmen in study at the

University.

But in 1263 he made over his manor-house and estate of Malden to a

"house of Scholars of Merton," with the object of supporting twenty

students preferably at Oxford.

The first statutes were granted in the following year. The scholars in

whom the property of this house was vested were not allowed to reside

within its walls for more than one week in the year, at the annual

audit. The house was to be occupied by a Warden and certain brethren or

Stewards. It was their business to

[Illustration: Old Gateway, Merton College

Herbert Railton Oxford]

administer the estate and pay their allowances to the scholars. The

scholars themselves were all originally nephews of the founder. Their

number was to be filled up from the descendants of his parents, or

failing them, other honest and capable young men, with a preference for

the diocese of Winchester. They were to study in some University where

they were to hire a hall and live together as a community. It was in the

very year of the secession to Northampton that the statutes were issued,

and it would have been obviously inexpedient to bind the students to one

University or one town. The Studium might be removed from Oxford or the

scholar might find it desirable to migrate from that University, to

Stamford, Cambridge, or even Paris. The founder, indeed, in view of such

a possibility did acquire a house at Cambridge for his college

(Pythagoras Hall).

The little community thus established at Oxford was to live simply and

frugally, without murmuring, satisfied with bread and beer, and with one

course of flesh or fish a day.

A second body of statutes given to the community in 1270 fixed their

abode definitely at Oxford and regulated their corporate life more in

detail. A sub-warden was now appointed to preside over the students in

Oxford, as well as one to administer at Malden.

Strict rules of discipline were laid down. At meals all scholars were to

keep silence save one, who was to read aloud some edifying work. All

noisy study was forbidden. If a student had need to talk, he must use

Latin. In every room one Socius, older and wiser than the others, was to

act as Præpositus, control the manners and studies of the rest and

report on them. To every twenty scholars a monitor was chosen to enforce

discipline. One among so many was not found to suffice, and by the final

statutes of Merton one monitor to ten was appointed. Thus originated the

office of Decanus (Dean).

A new class of poor students--"secondary scholars"--was also now

provided for. They were to receive sixpence a week each from Michaelmas

to Midsummer, and live with the rest at Oxford. In these secondary

scholars may be seen the germ of the distinction, so characteristic of

English colleges, between the full members of the society, afterwards

known as Fellows or Socii, and the scholars or temporary foundationers.

Socii originally meant those who boarded together in the same hall. It

was the founder of Queen's who first used the word to distinguish full

members of the society from foundationers, who were still later

distinguished as "scholares." Wykeham followed his example,

distinguishing the _verus et perpetuus socius_ from the probationer.

And from these secondary scholars it is probable that a century later

Willyot derived his idea of the institution of a separate class of

_Portionistae_, the Merton Postmasters. They originally received a

"stinted portion," compared with the scholars.

Merton became Chancellor once more on the death of Henry. He was

practically Regent of the Kingdom till the return of Edward from the

Crusades. As soon as he resigned the seals of office in 1274, he set

himself to revise the statutes of his college at Oxford, before taking

up his duties as Bishop of Rochester.

The wardens, bailiffs and ministers of the altar were now transferred

from Malden to Oxford, which was designated as the exclusive and

permanent home of the scholars. The statutes now given remained in force

till 1856, and are, to quote the verdict of the late warden,

"a marvellous repertory of minute and elaborate provisions

governing every detail of college life. The number and allowances

of the scholars; their studies, diet, costume, and discipline; the

qualifications, election and functions of the warden; the

distribution of powers among various college officers; the

management of the college estates and the conduct of the college

business are here regulated with remarkable sagacity. The policy

which dictates and underlies them is easy to discern. Fully

appreciating the intellectual movement of his age, and unwilling to

see the paramount control of it in the hands of the religious

Orders--the zealous apostles of papal supremacy--Walter de Merton

resolved to establish within the precincts of the University a

great seminary of secular clergy, which should educate a succession

of men capable of doing good service in Church and State.

"The employment of his scholars was to be study--not the

_claustralis religio_ of the older religious Orders, nor the more

practical and more popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and

Franciscans. He forbade them ever to take vows; he enjoined them to

maintain their corporate independence against foreign

encroachments; he ordained that all should apply themselves to

studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering on a

course of theology; and he provided special chaplains to relieve

them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even

encouraged their going forth into the great world. No ascetic

obligations were laid on them, but residence and continual study

were strictly prescribed, and if any scholar retired from the

college with the intention of giving up study, or even ceased to

study diligently, his salary was no longer to be paid. If the scale

of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was

chiefly because the founder intended the number of scholars to be

constantly increased as the revenues of the house might be

enlarged."

In this foundation Walter De Merton was the first to express the only

true idea of a college. Once expressed, it was followed by every

succeeding founder. The collegiate system revolutionised University life

in England. Merton was never tired of insisting upon the one great claim

which his community should have to the loyalty, affection and service of

its members.

It was this idea which has produced all that is good in the system. To

individual study in the University schools was added common life; to

private aims the idea of a common good. "The individual is called to

other activities besides those of his own sole gain. Diversities of

thought and training, of taste, ability, strength and character, brought

into daily contact, bound fast together by ties of common interest, give

birth to sympathy, broaden thought, and force enquiry, that haply in the

issue may be formed that reasoned conviction and knowledge, that power

of independent thought, to produce which is the great primary aim of

our English University education" (Henderson).

The founder, who had long been busy acquiring property in Oxford, had

impropriated the Church of S. John the Baptist for the benefit of the

college, and several houses in its immediate neighbourhood were made

over to the scholars. The site thus acquired (1265-8) became their

permanent home and was known henceforth as Merton Hall.

Of the buildings which were now erected and on which the eyes of the

founder may have rested in pride and hope, little now remains. The

antique stone carving over the college gate, the great north door of the

vestibule of the Hall, with its fantastic tracery of iron, perhaps the

Treasury and Outer Sacristy are relics of the earliest past. But Chapel,

Hall, Library and Quadrangle are later than the Founder.

As if to emphasise the ecclesiastical character of the English college,

he had begun at once to rebuild the parish church as a collegiate

church. The high altar was dedicated in the year of his death, 1277; the

rest of the chapel is of later dates.

The choir belongs to the end of the thirteenth century (1297), (Pure

Decorated); the transepts (Early Decorated, with later Perpendicular

windows and doors) were finished in 1424, but begun perhaps as early as

the choir; and the massive tower, with its soaring pinnacles, a fine

specimen of Perpendicular work, was completed in 1451.

It will be noticed that the chapel has no nave, but that, probably in

imitation of William of Wykeham's then recently finished naveless chapel

at New College, the nave which had evidently been intended was omitted

at Merton (after 1386). Two arches blocked with masonry in the western

wall and the construction of the west window indicate this original

intention of adding a nave.

The old thirteenth century glass in the Geometrical windows of the

chancel is of great interest. The arms of Castile and the portrait

[Illustration: Oriel College]

of Elinor of Castile (d. 1290) will be noticed. Merton Chapel is very

rich both in glass and brasses.

On entering the college you are struck at once by the fact that Merton

is not as other colleges arranged on a preconceived plan. But the

irregular and disconnected arrangement of the buildings of the

quadrangle are themselves suggestive of the fact that it was from Merton

and the plans of its founder that the college quadrangles may trace

their origin; as it is from Merton that they derive their constitution.

The hall, the chapel, the libraries and the living rooms, as essentials

for college life, were first adopted here, and these buildings were

disposed in an unconnected manner about a quadrangular court after the

fashion of the outer Curia of a monastery. The regular disposition of

college quadrangles was first completed by Wykeham, and whilst other

colleges have conformed to the perfected shape, Merton remains in its

very irregularity proudly the prototype, the mother of colleges.

Of the college buildings the most noteworthy is the library, the oldest

example of the mediæval library in England. It was the gift of William

Rede, Bishop of Chichester (1377). The dormer and east windows and the

ceiling are later, but the library as it is, though enriched by the

improvements of succeeding centuries, beautiful plaster-work and

panelling, noble glass and a sixteenth century ceiling, is not very

different from that in which the mediæval student pored over the

precious manuscripts chained to the rough sloping oaken desks which

project from the bookcases. These bookcases stand out towards the centre

of the room and form, with a reader's bench opposite to each of the

narrow lancet windows, a series of reader's compartments. How the books

were fastened and used in those days, you may gain a good idea by

examining the half case numbered forty-five.

It was in this library that the visitors of Edward VI. took their

revenge on the schoolmen and the popish commentators by destroying in

their stupid fanaticism not only innumerable works of theology, but also

of astronomy and mathematical science. "A cart-load," says Thomas

Allen, an eye-witness, "of such books were sold or given away, if not

burnt, for inconsiderable nothings." In this library Anthony Wood was

employed in the congenial occupation of "setting the books to rights,"

and here is preserved, according to tradition, the very astrolabe which

Chaucer studied. And, for a fact, a beautiful copy of the first Caxton

edition of his works is stored in the sacristy--a building which up till

1878 was used as a brew-house.

The charming inner quadrangle, in which the library is, rejoices in the

name "Mob" Quad--a name of which the derivation has been lost. Like the

Treasury, it probably dates from about 1300. The high-pitched roof of

the latter, made of solid blocks of ashlar, is one of the most

remarkable features of Merton. The outer sacristy is on the right of the

main entrance passage to Mob Quad, and thence an old stone staircase

leads to the Treasury or Muniment room. Another passage from the front

quadrangle leads to Patey's Quad. The Fellows' Quadrangle was begun in

1608, and the large gateway with columns of the four orders

(Roman-Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite) is typical of the

architectural taste of the times. The quadrangle itself, very similar to

that of Wadham, is one of the most beautiful and charming examples of

late Gothic imaginable. It would have been a fortunate thing if this had

been the last building added to Merton. But it was destined that the

taste of the Victorian era should be painfully illustrated by the new

buildings which were erected in 1864 by Mr Butterfield. The architect

was eager and the college not disinclined at that time to destroy part

of the library and the Mob Quad. The abominable building which replaced

the beautiful enclosure known as the Grove, combines with the new

buildings of Christ Church to spoil what might have been one of the most

beautiful effects of water, wood and architecture in the world--the view

of Oxford from the Christ Church and Broad Walks.

Inspired by the example of Merton and a similar dislike of monks and

friars, Walter de Stapeldon, the great Bishop of Exeter, ordained that

the twelve scholars whom he originally endowed (1314) should not study

theology or be in orders. The society, afterwards known as Exeter

College, was housed at first in Hart Hall and Arthur Hall, in the parish

of S. Peter in the East, and was intended by the founder to be called

Stapeldon Hall. In the following year he moved his scholars, eight of

whom, he stipulated, must be drawn from Devonshire and four from

Cornwall, to tenements which he had bought between the Turl and Smith

Gate, just within the walls. The founder added a rector to their number

and gave them statutes, based on those of Merton, which clearly

indicated that his object was to give a good education to young laymen.

The college was practically refounded in 1566 by Sir William Petre, a

successful servant of the Tudors. Of the pre-reformation buildings,

nothing unhappily remains save a fragment of the tower. The rest is

seventeenth century or nineteenth, the front on Turl Street dating from

1834, and the unlovely "modern Gothic" front on Broad Street from 1854.

Sir Gilbert Scott, who designed the latter, destroyed the old chapel and

replaced it with a copy of the Sainte Chapelle.

Ten years later another daughter of Merton was born. For in 1324 Adam de

Brome, Almoner of Edward II. and Rector of S. Mary's, obtained the royal

licence to found a college of scholars, Bachelor Fellows, who should

study theology and the Ars Dialectica. The statutes of this "Hall of the

Blessed Mary at Oxford," afterwards known as King's Hall and Oriel

College, were copied almost verbatim from those of Merton. Tackley's

Inn, on the south side of High Street (No. 106), and Perilous Hall, on

the north side of Horsemonger, now Broad Street, were purchased for the

College. But in 1326 it was refounded by the King, endowed with the

advowson and rectory of the Church of S. Mary, and ordered to be

governed by a Provost, chosen by the scholars from their own number. The

first Provost was the founder, who was also Rector of S. Mary's, and

the society now established itself in the Rectory House on the south

side of the High Street (St Mary Hall), at the north end of Schidyard

(Oriel) Street. The college gradually acquired property stretching up to

St John's (now Merton) Street, and in so doing became possessed of the

tenement at the angle of Merton and Oriel Street called /p, or, for some

uncertain reason, but probably on account of its possessing one of the

architectural features indicated by that word, La Oriole. It was here,

then, that the society fixed its abode and from this hall it took its

name. The present front quadrangle, resembling the contemporary front

quadrangles of Wadham and University, and endowed with a peculiar charm

by the weather-stained and crumbling stone, stands on the site of La

Oriole and other tenements. It was completed in the year of the outbreak

of the Civil War, _Regnante Carolo_, as the legend on the parapet

between the hall and chapel records, and the statue of Charles I. above

it indicates. The Garden Quadrangle was added in the eighteenth century.

The monks and friars have gone their way and the place of their

habitation knows them no more. But they have left their mark upon Oxford

in many ways. Though their brotherhoods were disbanded by Henry VIII.

and most of their buildings demolished, the quadrangles and cloisters of

many colleges recall directly the monastic habit, and the college halls

the refectory of a convent. Whilst the College of S. John dates back

from the scholastic needs of the Cistercians, and the Canterbury Quad

and gate at Christ Church keep alive by their names the recollection of

the Canterbury college founded by Archbishop Islip (1363) for the

Benedictines of Canterbury, the old hostels, which were once erected to

receive the Benedictine students from other convents, survive in those

old parts of Worcester which lie on your left as you approach the famous

gardens of that college. Trinity College occupies the place of Durham,

and Wadham has risen amid the ruins of a foundation of Augustines, whose

disputative powers were kept in memory in the exercises of the

University schools down to 1800. The monks of S. Frideswide's Priory, S.

George's Church, the Abbey of Osney, have all disappeared with the

friaries. But Christ Church is a magnificent monument to the memory of

the abbots and canons regular whom it has succeeded. The very conception

of an academical college was no doubt largely drawn from the colleges of

the regular religious Orders, which, unlike those of the Mendicants,

were entirely designed as places of study.

[Illustration: Monastic Buildings, Worcester College]

We have seen how the foundation of Merton, and therefore of Exeter and

Oriel, was directly due to the coming of the friars. And it is to their

influence that yet another great and once beautiful college, beautiful

no longer, but greater now and more famous than ever by virtue of the

services in politics and letters of its successful alumni, owes its

origin. For it was under the guidance of a Franciscan friar, one Richard

de Slikeburne, that the widow of Sir John de Balliol carried out her

husband's intention of placing upon a thoroughly organised footing his

house for poor scholars.

He, the Lord of Barnard Castle, father of the illustrious rival of the

Bruce, having about the year 1260 "unjustly vexed and enormously

damnified" the Church of Tynemouth and the Church of Durham, was

compelled by the militant bishop whose hard task it was to keep peace

on the Border, to do penance. He knelt, in expiation of his crime, at

the door of Durham Abbey, and was there publicly scourged by the bishop.

He also undertook to provide a perpetual maintenance for certain poor

scholars in the University.

Balliol's original scheme of benefaction had little in common with the

peculiarly English college-system inaugurated by Walter de Merton. It

was drawn up on the lines of the earlier foundations of Paris.

For the Hall of Balliol was originally a college for Artists only who

lost their places when they took a degree in Arts. Their scholarships

meanwhile supplied them only with food and lodging of a moderate

quality. But these youthful students, according to the democratic

principles on which the halls were carried on, made their own statutes

and customs, and it was in accordance with this code that the Principal

was required to govern them.

Balliol's scholars were established in Oxford by June 1266, and were at

first supported by an annual allowance from him. He granted them a

commons of eightpence a week. The hostel in which he lodged them was a

house he hired in Horsemonger Street (Broad Street), facing the moat and

city wall. But before he had made any provision for the permanent

endowment of his scholars Balliol died. A close connection had

apparently from the first been established between the hall and the

Franciscans. One of the agents by whom Balliol's dole had been

distributed was a Franciscan friar. Now, under the guidance and probably

at the instigation of the friar Richard of Slikeburne, whom she

appointed her attorney in the business, Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway,

the widow of John of Balliol, set herself to secure the welfare of her

husband's scholars. Since his death the very existence of the newly

formed society had been in jeopardy. The Lady Dervorguilla, then,

addressed a letter to the procurators or agents of Balliol's dole,

instructing them to put in force a code of statutes which was no doubt

in great part merely a formal statement of customs already established

at the Old Balliol Hall. She next fitted up the north aisle of the

parish church (S. Mary Magdalen) for the use of her scholars; she

endowed them with lands in Northumberland, and purchased for their

dwelling-place three tenements east of Old Balliol Hall. These

tenements, which were south-west of the present front quadrangle, and

faced the street, were soon known as New Balliol Hall or Mary Hall. The

whole of the site of the front quadrangle was acquired by the Society as

early as 1310.

A few years later (1327) the scholars built themselves a chapel, part of

which, said to be preserved in the dining-room of the Master's House,

forms an interesting link between the original scholars of Balliol and

the modern Society which is connected with the name of Dr Jowett. The

statutes, which had been much tinkered by subsequent benefactors and

bishops, were finally revised by Bishop Fox, the enlightened and

broad-minded founder of C.C.C.

Fox gave Balliol a constitution, not altogether in harmony with his own

ideals as expressed in the statutes of Corpus, but such as he thought

best fitted to fulfil the intentions of the founders. He divided the

Society into two halves:--ten juniors, _Scholastici_, and ten Fellows,

_Socii_, each of whom had a definite duty. In their hands the whole

government of the College was placed.

According to the new regulations the scholars or servitors of Balliol

were to occupy a position humbler than that of the younger students at

any other College. They were to wait upon the Master and the graduate

Fellows and to be fed with the crumbs that should fall from the table of

their superiors. They were to be nominated by the Fellow whom they were

to serve, to be from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, and if they

proved themselves industrious and well-behaved they were to be eligible

to Fellowships even though they had not taken the degree of B.A.

Commoners, as in most other Colleges, were to be allowed to lodge within

the walls of the College, and to take their meals with the members of

the Society.

The Fellowships, which entitled the holder to a "commons" of 1s. 8d. a

week, were thrown open to competition, candidates being required,

however, to be Bachelors of Arts, of legitimate birth, good character,

proficient in their studies, and in need of assistance, for any cure of

souls, or a private income of more than 40s. a year, was accounted a

reason for disqualification.

Fox had a weakness for metaphors. In the statutes of Corpus he "spoke

horticulturally; his metaphor was drawn from bees." On the present

occasion he uses a metaphor as elaborate and appropriate. The College is

described as a human body. The Master was the head, endued with the five

senses of seeing clearly, hearing discreetly, smelling sagaciously,

tasting moderately, and touching fitly; the senior Fellow was the neck;

the Deans were the shoulders; the two priests the sides; the Bursars the

arms and hands; the Fellows the stomach; the scholars the legs; and the

servants the feet, whose function it is to go whithersoever they are

bidden. Just as the body when sick would require a physician, so it was

said would the College sometimes require a visitor. The Master and

Fellows were given the unusual privilege of choosing their own visitor.

In the fifteenth century the whole quadrangle was rebuilt; the Old Hall,

the Old Library, the Master's House, and the block of buildings and

gateway facing Broad Street being then erected. Of these the shell of

the Master's House, the Old Hall, now converted into an undergraduates'

library, and the Old Library, much defaced by Wyatt, survive. The east

wall of the library was used to form the west end of the chapel, which

was built in 1529 to replace the old oratory. The sixteenth century

chapel was removed and the present building erected as a memorial to Dr

Jenkins, under whom Balliol had begun to develop into a College of

almost national importance. Mr Butterfield, the architect who had done

his best to ruin Merton, and who perpetrated Keble, was entrusted with

this unfortunate method of perpetuating the worthy Master's memory.

[Illustration: Balliol College]

Mr Waterhouse is responsible for the present front of the College, the

east side of the first quadrangle, the north side of the Garden

Quadrangle and the new Hall therein (1867-1877).

Not content with fighting the University, the Oxford Friars soon began

to fight each other. Rivalries sprang up between the Orders; enormous

scandals of discord, as Matthew Paris phrases it. Jealousy found its

natural vent in politics as in the schools. Politically, the Oxford

Franciscans supported Simon de Montfort; the Dominicans sided with the

King. The Mad Parliament met in the Convent of the Black Friars. In

philosophy the Franciscans attacked the doctrine of the Dominican, S.

Thomas Aquinas, who had made an elaborate attempt to show that natural

and revealed truth were complementary the one of the other. In order to

establish this thesis and to reconcile human philosophy and the

Christian faith, the Angelic Doctor, for so he was commonly termed, had

written an encyclopædia of philosophy and theology, in which he advanced

arguments on both sides of every question and decided judicially on each

in strict accordance with the tenets of the Church.

The light of this "sparkling jewel of the clergy, this very clear mirror

of the University of Paris, this noble and illuminating candlestick,"

was somewhat dimmed, however, when the great Franciscan hero, the

"subtle doctor," Duns Scotus, took up the argument, and clearly proved

that the reasoning of this champion of orthodoxy was itself unorthodox.

The world of letters was divided for generations into the rival camps of

Scotists and Thomists. But the two doctors have fared very differently

at the hands of posterity. Thomas was made a Saint, judged to be a

"candlestick," and awarded by Dante a place high in the realms of

Paradise. Duns Scotus, on the other hand, whose learning and industry

were as great and his merit probably not much inferior, survives chiefly

in the English language as a "dunce." The name of the great Oxford

scholar stands to the world chiefly as a synonym for a fool and a

blockhead. For when the Humanists, and afterwards the Reformers,

attacked his system as a farrago of needless entities and useless

distinctions, the Duns men, or Dunses, on their side railed against the

new learning. The name of Dunce, therefore, already synonymous with

cavilling sophist or hair-splitter, soon passed into the sense of dull,

obstinate person, impervious to the new learning, and of blockhead,

incapable of learning or scholarship. Such is the justice of history.

Duns Scotus had carried the day and the Church rallied to the side of

the Franciscans. But such a successful attack involved the Orders in

extreme bitterness. The Dominicans retorted that these Franciscans, who

claimed and received such credit throughout Europe for humility and

Christlike poverty, were really accumulating wealth by alms or bequests.

The charge was true enough.

The pride and luxury of the Friars, their splendid buildings, their

laxity in the Confessional, their artifices for securing proselytes,

their continual strife with the University and their endeavours to

obtain peculiar privileges therein had long undermined their popularity.

They were regarded as "locusts" who had settled on the land and stripped

the trees of learning and of life.

Duns Scotus held almost undisputed sway for a while. His works on logic,

theology and philosophy were text-books in the University. But presently

there arose a new light, a pupil of his own, to supplant him.

William of Ockham, the "singular" or "invincible" doctor, revived the

doctrine of Nominalism. At once the glory and reproach of his Order, he

used the weapons of Scholasticism to destroy it.

But if in Philosophy the "invincible doctor" was a sceptic, in Theology

he was a fanatical supporter of the extreme Franciscan view that the

ministers of Christ were bound to follow the example of their Master,

and to impose upon themselves absolute poverty. It was a view which

found no favour with popes or councils. But undeterred by the thunders

of the Church, Ockham did not shrink from thus attacking the

foundations of the papal supremacy or from asserting the rights of the

civil power.

Paris had been, as we have seen, the first home of Scholasticism, but

with the beginning of the fourteenth century, Oxford had taken its place

as the centre of intellectual activity in Europe. The most important

schoolmen of the age were all Oxonians, and nearly all the later

schoolmen of note were Englishmen or Germans educated in the traditions

of the English "nation" at Paris.

And when the old battle between Nominalism and Realism was renewed, it

was fought with more unphilosophical virulence than before. "It was at

this time that Philosophy literally descended from the schools into the

street, and that the _odium metaphysicum_ gave fresh zest to the

unending faction fight between north and south at Oxford, between Czech

and German at Prague" (Rashdall).

Yet this was not without good results. For Scholasticism began now to

come in contact with practical life. The disputants were led on to deal

with the burning questions of the day, the questions, that is, as to the

foundations of property, the respective rights of king and pope, of king

and subject, of priest and people.

The day was now at hand when the trend of political events, stimulated

by the influence of the daring philosophical speculations of the Oxford

schoolmen, was to issue in a crisis. The crisis was a conflict between

the claims of papal supremacy and the rights of the civil power, and for

this crisis Oxford produced the man--John Wycliffe.

Born on the banks of the Tees, he, the last of the great schoolmen, was

educated at Balliol, where he probably resided till he was elected

master of that College in 1356. In 1361 he accepted a College living and

left Oxford for a while, but was back again in 1363, and resided in

Queen's College. He combined his residence there and his studies for a

degree in theology with the holding of a living at Ludgershall in Bucks.

Some suppose that he was then appointed Warden of Canterbury Hall,[19]

but this supposition is probably incorrect. At any rate he was already a

person of importance, not only at Oxford, but at the Court.

When Parliament decided to repudiate the annual tribute to the Pope

which John had undertaken to pay, Wycliffe officially defended this

repudiation. He continued to study at Oxford, developing his views. That

he was in high favour at Court is shown by the fact that he was

nominated (1374) by the Crown to the Rectory of Lutterworth and

appointed one of the Royal Commissioners to confer with the papal

representatives at Bruges. But he continued lecturing at Oxford and

preaching in London.

Politically he threw in his lot with the Lancastrian party. For he had

been led in the footsteps of his Italian and English predecessors,

Marsiglio and Ockham, to proclaim that the Church suffered by being

involved in secular affairs, and that endowments were a hindrance to the

proper spiritual purpose of the Church. So it came about that the

"Flower of Oxford," as he was called, the priest who desired to reform

the clergy, found himself in alliance with John of Gaunt, the worldly

statesman, who merely desired to rob them. He soon found himself in need

of the Duke's protection. The wealthy and worldly churchmen of the day

were not likely to listen tamely to his lectures. He was summoned before

Bishop Courtenay of London to answer charges of erroneous teaching

concerning the wealth of the Church (1377). The Duke of Lancaster

accepted the challenge as given to himself. He stood by Wycliffe in the

Consistory Court at S. Paul's, and a rude brawl between his supporters

and those of Courtenay, in which the Duke himself is said to have

threatened to drag the Bishop out of the church by the hair of his

head, put an end to the trial. Papal bulls were now promulgated against

Wycliffe. The University was directed to condemn and arrest him, if he

were found guilty of maintaining certain "conclusions" extracted from

his writings. The Oxford masters, however, were annoyed at the attack

made upon a distinguished member of their body, and they resented, as a

threatened infringement of their privileges, the order of the Archbishop

and Bishop of London, which commanded the Oxford divines to hold an

enquiry and to send Wycliffe to London to be heard in person. What they

did, therefore, was simply to enjoin Wycliffe to remain within the walls

of Black Hall, whilst they, after considering his opinions, declared

them orthodox, but liable to misinterpretation. But Wycliffe could not

disobey the Archbishop's summons to appear at Lambeth. There he proved

the value of a Schoolman's training. The subtlety of "the most learned

clerk of his time" reduced his opponents to silence.

The prelates were at a loss how to proceed. They were relieved from

their dilemma by the arrival of a Knight from the Court, who brought a

peremptory message from the Princess of Wales, mother of Richard II.,

forbidding them to issue any decree against Wycliffe.

The session was dissolved by an invasion of the London crowd. Wycliffe

escaped scot-free. Then followed the scandal of the Great Schism, when

two, or even three, candidates each claimed to be the one and only Vicar

of Christ.

It is the Great Schism which would appear to have converted Wycliffe

into a declared opponent of the papacy. Pondering on the problems of

Church and State which had hitherto occupied his energies, he was now

forced to the conclusion that the papal, and therefore the sacerdotal

power in general must be assailed. It was a logical deduction from his

central thesis, the doctrine of "dominion founded on grace." He

organised a band of preachers who should instruct the laity in the

mother tongue and supply them with a Bible translated into English. Thus

under his auspices Oxford became the centre of a widespread religious

movement. There the poor or simple priests, as they were called, had a

common abode, whence, barefooted and clad in russet or grey gowns which

reached to their ankles, they went forth to propagate his doctrines. And

since the Friars, who owed their independence of the bishops and clergy

to the privilege conferred upon them by the popes, were strong

supporters of the papal autocracy, Wycliffe attacked them, by his own

eloquence and that of his preachers, and that at a time when their

luxurious and degenerate lives laid them open to popular resentment.

Already (1356) Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who like

Wycliffe had been a scholar of Balliol and in 1333 had held the office

of Vice-Chancellor, had attacked the Friars for their encroachments upon

the domain of the parish priests; their power, their wealth, their

mendicancy, he maintained, were all contrary to the example and precepts

of Christ and therefore of their founder. He charged them also with

encroaching upon the rights of parents by making use of the confessional

to induce children to enter their convents and become Friars. This was

the reason, he asserted, why the University had fallen to one-fifth of

its former numbers, for parents were unwilling to send their sons

thither and preferred to bring them up as farmers.

This attack furnished Wycliffe with a model for his onslaught. In his

earlier days he had treated the Friars with respect and even as

allies--"a Franciscan" he had said, "is very near to God"--for then he

had been attacking the endowments of the Church, and it was the monks or

"possessioners" and the rich secular clergy to whom he was opposed. In

theory the Mendicant Orders were opposed to these by their poverty and

in practice by their interests.

But the Friars were the close allies and chief defenders of the Pope.

Now, therefore, when Wycliffe passed from political to doctrinal reform,

his attitude towards the Mendicant Orders becomes one of uncompromising

hostility.

He and his followers denounced them with all the vehemence of religious

partisanship and all the vigour of the vernacular. Iscariot's children,

they called them, and irregular Procurators of the Fiend, adversaries of

Christ and Disciples of Satan.

Wycliffe indeed went so far as to attribute an outbreak of disease in

Oxford to the idleness and intellectual stagnation of the Friars.

"Being inordinately idle and commonly gathered together in towns

they cause a whole sublunary unseasonableness."

Finally, Wycliffe aimed at undermining the power of the priesthood by

challenging the doctrine of Transubstantiation. According to this

doctrine the priest had the power of working a daily miracle by "making

the body of Christ." Wycliffe, in the summer of 1381, first publicly

denied that the elements of the sacrament underwent any material change

by virtue of the words uttered by the priest. The real presence of the

body and blood of Christ he maintained, but that there was any change of

substance he denied.

The heresy was promulgated at Oxford. An enquiry was immediately held by

the Chancellor (William Berton) and twelve doctors, half of them Friars,

and the new "pestiferous" doctrines were condemned. The condemnation and

injunction forbidding any man in future to teach or defend them in the

University was announced to Wycliffe as he was sitting in the

Augustinian Schools, disputing the subject. He was taken aback, but at

once challenged chancellor or doctor to disprove his conclusions. The

"pertinacious heretic," in fact, continued to maintain his thesis, and

made a direct appeal, not to the Pope, but to the King. The University

rallied to his side and tacitly supported his cause by replacing Berton

with Robert Rygge in the office of Vice-Chancellor. Rygge was more than

a little inclined to be a Wycliffite. And Wycliffe meanwhile appealed

also to the people by means of those innumerable tracts in the English

tongue, which make the last of the schoolmen the first of the English

pamphleteers. Whilst he was thus entering on his most serious encounter

with the Church, suddenly there broke out the Peasant Revolt. The

insurrection blazed forth suddenly, furiously, simultaneously and died

away, having spent its force in a fortnight. It was a sporadic revolt

with no unity of purpose or action except to express the general social

discontent. But the upper classes were seriously frightened and some of

the odium was reflected on the subversive doctrines of Wycliffe, whose

Lollard preachers had doubtless dabbled not a little in the socialism

which honey-combed the Middle Ages.

When order was again restored, Courtenay, now become Archbishop, began

to take active measures to repress the opinions of Wycliffe. He summoned

a synod at the Blackfriars in London to examine them. The first session

was interrupted by an earthquake, which was differently interpreted as a

sign of the divine approval or anger. The Earthquake Council had no

choice but to condemn such doctrines as those they were asked to

consider, that God ought to obey the devil, for instance, or that no one

ought to be recognised as Pope after Urban VI.

When these doctrines were condemned, Wycliffe does not appear to have

been present, nor was any action at all taken against him personally. It

is supposed that his popularity at Oxford rendered him too formidable a

person to attack. He was left at peace and the storm fell upon his

disciples. The attack was made on "certain children of perdition," who

had publicly taught the condemned doctrines, and "who went about the

country preaching to the people, without proper authority." All such

preachers were to be visited with the greater excommunication.

As Oxford, however, was the centre of the movement a separate mandate

was sent thither.

The Archbishop sent down a commissary, Peter Stokes, a Carmelite friar,

to Oxford, to prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoiding

any mention of the teacher's name. The University authorities were by no

means pleased at this invasion, so they held it, of their ancient

privileges. The Chancellor Rygge had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a

devoted follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University; he now

appointed a no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon to the same office.

His sermon was an outspoken defence of the Lollards. Stokes reported

that he dared not publish the Archbishop's mandate, that he went about

in the fear of his life; for scholars with arms concealed beneath their

gowns accompanied the preachers and it appeared that not the Chancellor

only, but both the Proctors were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to

support the Wycliffites to abating one jot of what they considered the

privileges of the University. And for once the Mayor was of the same

opinion as the rulers of the University. Still, when the Chancellor was

summoned before the Archbishop in London, he did not venture to disobey,

and promptly cleared himself of any suspicion of heresy. The council met

again at the Blackfriars, and Rygge submissively took his seat in it. On

his bended knees he apologised for his disobedience to the Archbishop's

orders, and only obtained pardon through the influence of William of

Wykeham. Short work was made of the Oxford Wycliffites; they were

generally, and four of them by name, suspended from all academical

functions. Rygge returned to Oxford, with a letter from Courtenay which

repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, adding to their names

the name of Wycliffe himself. The latter was likened by the Archbishop

to a serpent which emits noxious poison. But the Chancellor protested he

dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be issued to

compel him. Meanwhile he showed his real feeling in the matter by

suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them

by the offensive name of Lollards ("idle babblers"). But the council in

London went on to overpower the party by stronger measures.[20] Wycliffe

had apparently retired before the storm burst upon Oxford. John of Gaunt

was appealed to by the preachers named. But the great Duke of Lancaster

had no desire to incur the charge of encouraging heresy. He pronounced

the opinions of Hereford and Repyngdon on the nature of the eucharist

utterly detestable. The last hope of Lollardism was gone. Wycliffe

himself retired unmolested to Lutterworth, where he died and was buried.

"Admirable," says Fuller "that a hare so often hunted with so many packs

of dogs should die at last quietly sitting in his form." Just as he owed

his influence as a Reformer to the skill and fame as a schoolman which

he had acquired at Oxford, so now his immunity was due to his reputation

as the greatest scholastic doctor in the "second school of the Church."

The statute "De haeretico Comburendo" did its work quickly in stamping

out Lollardy in the country. The tares were weeded out. In Oxford alone

the tradition of Wycliffe died hard. A remarkable testimonial was issued

in October 1406 by the Chancellor and Masters, sealed with the

University seal. Some have thought it a forgery, and at the best it

probably only represented, as Maxwell Lyte suggests, the verdict of a

minority of the Masters snatched in the Long Vacation. But it is in any

case of considerable significance. It extols the character of John

Wycliffe, and his exemplary performances as a son of the University; it

extols his truly Catholic zeal against all who blasphemed Christ's

religion by voluntary begging, and asserts that he was neither convicted

of heretical pravity during his life, nor exhumed and burned after

death. He had no equal, it maintains, in the University as a writer on

logic, philosophy, theology or ethics.

Here then, Archbishop Arundel (1407) an Oriel man, who with his father

had built for that College her first chapel, found it necessary to take

strong steps. He held a provincial council at Oxford and ordered that

all books written in Wycliffe's time should pass through the censorship,

first of the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and secondly of the

Archbishop himself, before they might be used in the schools. The

establishment of such a censorship was equivalent to a fatal muzzling of

genius. If it silenced the Wycliffite teaching, it silenced also the

enunciation of any original opinion or truth. Two years later Arundel

risked a serious quarrel with the University in order to secure the

appointment of a committee to make a list of heresies and errors to be

found in Wycliffe's writings. He announced his intention of holding a

visitation of the University with that object. He met with violent

opposition. The opponents of the Archbishop were not all enthusiastic

supporters of Wycliffe's views. Not all masters and scholars were moved

by pure zeal either for freedom of speculation or for evangelical truth.

The local patriotism of the north countryman reinforced the religious

zeal of the Lollard. The chronic antipathy of the secular scholars to

the friars, of the realists to the nominalists, of the artists to the

higher faculties, and the academic pride of the loyal Oxonians--these

were all motives which fought for Wycliffe and his doctrines. Least

tangible but not least powerful among them was the last, for when civil

or ecclesiastical authority endeavoured to assert itself over corporate

privileges in the Middle Ages, a very hornet's nest of local patriotism

and personal resentment was quickly roused.

The Oxford masters were impatient of all interference ecclesiastical as

well as civil. They had thrown off the yoke of the Bishop of Lincoln and

the Archdeacon of Oxford. And, with a view to asserting their

independence of the Primate, they had succeeded in obtaining a bull from

Boniface IX. in which he specifically confirmed the sole jurisdiction of

the Chancellor over all members of the University whatever, Priests and

Monks and Friars included. The University, however, was compelled to

renounce the bull, and to submit to the visitation of the Archbishop.

But the submission was not made without much disturbance and bitterness

of feeling. The Lollards, the younger scholars and the northerners, with

their lawless allies the Irish, were in favour of active resistance.

The behaviour of three Fellows of Oriel will show how the University was

divided against itself. These men, so runs the complaint against them,

"are notorious fomenters of discord."

"They lead a band of ruffians by night, who beat, wound, and spoil

men and cause murder. They haunt taverns day and night, and do not

enter college before ten or eleven or twelve o'clock, and even

scale the walls to the disturbance of quiet students, and bring in

armed strangers to spend the night. Thomas Wilton came in over the

wall at ten and knocked at the Provost's chamber, and woke up and

abused him as a liar, and challenged him to get up and come out to

fight him. Against the Provost's express orders, on the vigil of S.

Peter, these three had gone out of college, broken the Chancellor's

door and killed a student of law. The Chancellor could neither

sleep in his house by night nor walk in the High Street by day for

fear of these men."

The arrival of the Archbishop at Oxford then, to hold a visitation at S.

Mary's was a signal for an outbreak. S. Mary's was barricaded and a band

of scholars armed with bows, swords and bucklers awaited the Primate.

Notwithstanding the interdict laid on the Church, John Birch of Oriel,

one of the Proctors, took the keys, opened the doors, had the bell rung

as usual, and even celebrated High Mass there. S. Mary's, it will be

remembered, belonged to Oriel. Hence, perhaps, the active resistance of

these Oriel Fellows and of the Dean of Oriel, John Rote, who asked "why

should we be punished by an interdict on our church for other people's

faults?" And he elegantly added, "The Devil go with the Archbishop and

break his neck." The controversy was at last referred to the king. The

Chancellors and Proctors resigned their office. The younger students who

had opposed the Archbishop were soundly whipped, much to the delight of

Henry IV. The bull of exemption was declared invalid; the University

acknowledged itself subject to the See of Canterbury, thanks to the

mediation of the Prince of Wales, mad-cap Harry, and the Archbishop

Arundel made a handsome present of books to the public library of

Oxford.

The committee desired by Arundel was eventually constituted. Two hundred

and sixty-seven propositions were condemned and the obnoxious books

solemnly burnt at Carfax. Not long after, a copy of the list of

condemned articles was ordered to be preserved in the public libraries,

and oaths against their maintenance were enjoined upon all members of

the University on graduation.

The methods of the Archbishop met with the success which usually attends

a well-conducted persecution. History notices the few martyrs who from

time to time have laid down their lives for their principles, but it

often fails to notice the millions of men who have discarded their

principles rather than lay down their lives.

So the Wycliffite heresy was at length dead and buried. But the

ecclesiastical repression which succeeded in bringing this about

succeeded also in destroying all vigour and life in the thought of the

University. Henceforth the Schoolmen refrained from touching on the

practical questions of their day. They struck out no new paths of

thought, but revolved on curves of subtle and profitless speculation,

reproducing and exaggerating in their logical hair-splitting all the

faults without any of the intellectual virtues of the great thinkers of

the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was against these degenerate

dullards that the human mind at last rebelled, when intellect was born

again in the New Birth of letters. What wonder then if, suddenly freed

from the dead weight of their demoralising stupidities, men broke out in

the exuberance of their spirits into childish excesses, confused the

master with his foolish and depressing pupils, strewed the quadrangle of

New College with the leaves of Dunce, and put them to the least noble of

uses, as though they had been the Chronicles of Volusius.

The Archbishop's right of Visitation was confirmed in Parliament and

with it the suppression of Lollardy, of free speech and thought, in the

schools and pulpits of Oxford.

The issue of the struggle practically closes the history of Lollardism

as a recognised force in English politics, and with it the intellectual

history of mediæval Oxford.

Up to that time the University had shown itself decidedly eager for

reform, and for a few years the same spirit survived. Oxford had

consistently advocated the summoning of a General Council to settle the

claims of the rival popes and to put an end to the schism which was the

scandal of Christendom. But for fifteen years such pacific designs were

eluded by the arts of the ambitious pontiffs, and the scruples or

passions of their adherents. At length the Council of Pisa deposed, with

equal justice, the Popes of Rome and Avignon. In their stead, as they

intended, but in addition to them as events were to prove, the conclave,

at which the representatives of Oxford and Cambridge were present,

unanimously elected Peter Philargi. This Franciscan friar from Crete,

who had taken his degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford, assumed the

title of Alexander V., and remains the only wearer of the tiara who has

graduated at Oxford or Cambridge. He was shortly afterwards succeeded by

John XXIII., the most profligate of mankind. It remained for the Council

of Constance to correct the rash proceedings of Pisa, and to substitute

one head of the Church in place of the three rival popes (1414).

But before the opening of this Council the University of Oxford had

drawn up and presented to the King a document of a very remarkable

character. It consisted of forty-six articles for the reformation of the

Church. The Oxford masters suggested that the three rival popes should

all resign their claims; they complained of the simoniacal and

extortionate proceedings of the Roman Court, and of the appointment of

foreigners to benefices in England; they accused the Archbishops of

encroaching on the rights of their suffragans, and charged the whole

Order of prelates with nepotism and avarice. Abbots, they contended,

should not be allowed to wear mitres and sandals as if they were

bishops, and monks should hot be exempt from ordinary episcopal

jurisdiction. Friars should be restrained from granting absolution on

easy terms, from stealing children, and from begging for alms in the

house of God. Secular canons should be made to abandon their luxurious

style of living, and masters of hospitals to pay more regard to the

wants of the poor. Parish priests, who neglected the flocks committed to

their care, are described as ravening wolves. The Masters also

complained of the non-observance of the Sabbath and of the iniquitous

system of Indulgences.

Shades of the founder of Lincoln College, what a document is this! It is

Wycliffism alive, rampant and unashamed. Not perhaps altogether

unashamed or at least not indiscreet, for the Masters go out of their

way to call for active measures against the Lollards. But the whole of

this manifesto is a cry from Oxford, in 1414, for reformation; it is a

direct echo of the teaching and declamation of Wycliffe, and an appeal

for reformation as deliberate and less veiled than "the vision of

William Langland concerning Piers Plowman," that sad, serious satirist

of those times, who, in his contemplation of the corruption he saw

around him in the nobility, the Government, the Church and the Friars,

"all the wealth of the world and the woe too," saw no hope at all save

in a new order of things.

Oxford's zeal for reformation at this time was made very clear also by

her representatives at Constance, where a former Chancellor, Robert

Halam, Bishop of Salisbury, and Henry Abingdon, a future Warden of

Merton, very greatly distinguished themselves. Yet it was by a decree of

this very Council of Constance (1415) that the remains of Wycliffe were

ordered to be taken up and cast out far from those of any orthodox

Christian. This order was not executed till twelve years later, when

Bishop Fleming, having received direct instructions from the Pope, saw

to it.

Wycliffe's remains were dug up, burnt and cast into the Swift, but, as

it has been said, the Swift bore them to the Avon, the Avon to the

Severn, and the Severn to the sea to be dispersed unto all lands: which

things are an allegory. For though in England the repression of his

teaching deferred the reformation, which theologically as well as

politically Wycliffe had begun, for more than a hundred years, yet

abroad, in Bohemia, the movement which he had commenced grew into a

genuine national force, destined to react upon the world.

Bishop Fleming, who had been proctor in 1407, seems to have thought that

the snake was scotched but not killed. For though he had been a

sympathiser with the Lollards in his youth, in his old age he thought it

worth while to found a "little college of theologians," who should

defend the mysteries of the sacred page "against these ignorant laics,

who profaned with swinish snout its most holy pearls." The students in

this stronghold of orthodox divinity were to proceed to the degree of

B.D. within a stated period; they must swear not to favour the pestilent

sect of Wycliffites, and if they persisted in heresy were to be cast out

of the College "as diseased sheep." It was in 1427 that Fleming obtained

a charter permitting him to unite the three parish churches of All

Saints', S. Michael's, and S. Mildred's into a collegiate church, and

there to establish a "collegiolum," consisting of a rector and seven

students of Theology, endowed with the revenue of those churches. No

sooner had he appointed the first rector, purchased a site and begun to

erect the buildings just south of the tower, than he died. The energy of

the second rector, however, Dr John Beke, secured the firmer foundation

of the College. He completed the purchase of the original site, which is

represented by the front quadrangle and about half the grove; and

thereon John Forest, Dean of Wells, completed (1437) the buildings as

Fleming had planned them, including a chapel and library, hall and

kitchen, and rooms. Modern Lincoln is bounded by Brasenose College and

Brasenose Lane, the High Street and the Turl,[21] the additional

property between All Saints' Church and the front quadrangle having been

bestowed upon the College during the period 1435-1700. Of Forest's

buildings the kitchen alone remains untouched, and a very charming

fragment of the old structure it is.

The foundation of Lincoln was remodelled and developed by Thomas

Rotherham, Chancellor of Cambridge, and afterwards Archbishop of York.

His benefactions to the cause of learning were munificent and unceasing,

and, so far as Lincoln is concerned, he may fairly be called the

College's second founder. The origin of his interest in the College

arose from a picturesque incident. When he visited the College as bishop

of the diocese in 1474, the rector, John Tristrope, urged its claims in

the course of a sermon. He took for his text the words from the psalm,

"Behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand hath

planted," and he earnestly exhorted the bishop to complete the work

begun by his predecessor. For the College was poor, and what property it

had was at this time threatened. So powerful and convincing was his

appeal that, at the end of the sermon, the bishop stood up and announced

that he would grant the request. He was as good as his word. He gave the

College a new charter and new statutes (1480)--a code which served it

till the Commission of 1854; he increased its revenues and completed the

quadrangle on the south side. There is a vine which still grows in

Lincoln, on the north side of the chapel quadrangle, and this is the

successor of a vine which was either planted alongside the hall in

allusion to the successful text, or, being already there, suggested it.

[Illustration: Oriel Window, Lincoln College]