CHAPTER V

THE MEDIÆVAL STUDENT

"A clerk ther was of Oxenford also,

That unto logik hadde longe ygo....

For him was lever have at his beddes heed

Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,

Of Aristotle and his philosophye

Than robes riche, or fithele or gay sautrye.

But al be that he was a philosophre,

Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;

But al that he mighte of his freendes hente,

On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,

And bisily gan for the soules preye

Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye.

Of studie took he most cure and most hede.

Noght o word spak he more than was nede,

And that was seyd in forme and reverence,

And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.

Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,

And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."

As you drive into Oxford from the railway station, you pass, as we have

seen, monuments which may recall to mind the leading features of her

history and the part which she took in the life of the country. The

Castle Mound takes us back to the time when Saxon was struggling against

Dane; the Castle itself is the sign manual of the Norman conquerors; the

Cathedral spire marks the site upon which S. Frideswide and her

"she-monastics" built their Saxon church upon the virgin banks of the

river. Carfax, with the Church of S. Martin, was the centre

[Illustration: The Porch & Gate S. Mary the Virgins.]

of the city's life and represents the spirit of municipal liberty which

animated her citizens, and the progress of their municipal freedom.

The bell which swung in Carfax Tower summoned the common assembly to

discuss and to decide their own public affairs and to elect their own

mayor. And this town-mote of burghers, freemen within the walls, who

held their rights as burghers by virtue of their tenure of ground on

which their tenement stood, met in Carfax Churchyard. Justice was

administered by mayor and bailiff sitting beneath the low shed, the

"penniless bench"[22] of later times, without its eastern wall. And

around the church lay the trade guilds, ranged as in some vast

encampment.

Carfax Church, with all its significance of municipal life, stands at

the top of High Street, the most beautiful street in the world. Still,

by virtue of the splendid sweep of its curve comparable only to the

Grand Canal of Venice or the bend of Windermere, and by virtue of the

noble grouping of its varied buildings, the most beautiful street in the

world; in spite of modern tramways and the ludicrous dome of the Shelley

Memorial, "a thing resembling a goose pye," as Swift wrote of Sir John

Vanburgh's house in Whitehall; in spite of the disquieting ornamentation

of Brasenose new buildings and the new schools; in spite even of the

unspeakably vulgar and pretentious façade of Lloyd's Bank, a gross,

advertising abomination of unexampled ugliness and impertinence, which

has done all that was possible to ruin the first view of this street of

streets. Let us leave it behind us with a shudder and pass down the High

till we find on our left, at what was once the end of "Schools Street,"

the lovely twisted columns of the porch which forms the modern entrance

to S. Mary's Church.

What Carfax was to the municipal life of Oxford, S. Mary's was to the

University. It was the centre of the academical and ecclesiastical life

of the place. And the bell which swung in S. Mary's tower summoned the

students of the University sometimes to take part in learned

disputations among themselves, sometimes to fight the citizens of the

town.

Here then, between the Churches of S. Martin and S. Mary, the life of

this mediæval University town ebbed and flowed. In the narrow,

ill-paved, dirty streets, streets that were mere winding passages, from

which the light of day was almost excluded by the overhanging tops of

the irregular houses, crowded a motley throng. The country folks filled

the centre of the streets with their carts and strings of pack-horses;

at the sides, standing beneath the signs of their calling, which

projected from their houses, citizens in varied garb plied their trades,

chaffering with the manciples, but always keeping their bow-strings

taut, ready to promote a riot by pelting a scholar with offal from the

butchers' stall, and prompt to draw their knives at a moment's notice.

To and fro among the stalls moved Jews in their yellow gaberdines; black

Benedictines and white Cistercians; Friars black, white and grey;

men-at-arms from the Castle, and flocks of lads who had entered some

grammar school or religious house to pass the first stage of the

University course. Here passed a group of ragged, gaunt, yellow-visaged

sophisters, returning peacefully from lectures to their inns, but with

their "bastards" or daggers, as well as their leather pouches, at their

waists. Here a knot of students, fantastically attired in many-coloured

garments, whose tonsure was the only sign of their clerkly character,

wearing beards, long hair, furred cloaks, and shoes chequered with red

and green, paraded the thoroughfare, heated with wine from the feast of

some determining bachelor. Here a line of servants, carrying the books

of scholars or doctors to the schools, or there a procession of

colleagues escorting to the grave the body of some master, and bearing

before the corpse a silver cross, threaded the throng. Here hurried a

bachelor in his cape, a new master in

[Illustration: The High Street

On the left University College. On the right All Saints' Church,

Brasenose College, Church of S. Mary the Virgin, All Souls' & Queen's

Colleges.]

his "pynsons" or heelless shoes, a scholar of Exeter in his black boots,

a full-fledged master with his tunic closely fastened about the middle

by a belt and wearing round his shoulders a black, sleeveless, close

gown. Here gleamed a mantle of crimson cloth, or the budge-edged hood of

a doctor of law or of theology. And in the hubbub of voices which

proceeded from this miscellaneous, parti-coloured mob, might be

distinguished every accent, every language, and every dialect.[23] For

French, German and Spanish students jostled in these streets against

English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh; Kentish students mingled with

students from Somersetshire or Yorkshire, and the speech of each was

quite unintelligible to the other.

S. Mary's Church was the only formal meeting place of these students,

thus drawn together in the pursuit of knowledge from various parts of

Europe. It was here that all University business, secular and religious,

was transacted, till the building of the Divinity school and the

Sheldonian theatre allowed the church to be reserved for sacred

purposes. Then at last it ceased to be the scene of violent altercations

between Heads of Houses or the stage where the Terræ Filius of the year

should utter his scurrilous banalities.[24]

But still every Sunday morning during term the great bell of S. Mary's

rings out and summons the University to assemble in formal session there

to hear a sermon. The bedels of the four faculties with their silver

staves lead the way; and the Vice-chancellor is conducted to his throne,

the preacher to his pulpit; the doctors of the several faculties in

their rich robes follow and range themselves on either side of their

official head; below them the proctors, representatives of the Masters

of Arts, wearing the white hoods of their office, take their seats. The

masters and bachelors fill the body of the church, the undergraduates

are crowded into the galleries.

We must not think of S. Mary's as merely a meeting-house for University

business or as merely a parish church. For centuries it has been the

centre of Christian Oxford; where each successive movement in English

theology has been expounded and discussed. From the old stone pulpit, of

which a fragment is fixed over the southern archway of the tower, Peter

Martyr delivered his testimony and Cole sent Cranmer to the stake; from

its nineteenth century successor, John Keble began the Oxford movement;

Dr Pusey preached a sermon for which he was suspended, and Newman (vicar

1831) entered on the path to Rome.

The church is mentioned in Domesday Book, and the north wall of the Lady

Chapel, commonly known as Adam de Brome's Chapel because the tomb of the

founder of Oriel is therein, may have been part of the church as it

stood at the time of the Domesday survey. The tower and the spire date

from the early fourteenth century.

S. Mary's as we have it now is very much a Tudor building. When William

of Wykeham built New College Chapel he set a fashion which soon

converted Oxford into a city of pinnacles.[25] In the perpendicular

style pinnacles were erected on Merton tower and transept, on All Souls'

Chapel, on Magdalen Chapel, hall and tower; nearly a hundred pinnacles

decorated the Schools and Library; the nave, aisles and chancel of S.

Mary's received the same ornaments, and pinnacles in the same style were

added to the clusters of the fourteenth century tower and spire. These

were not high but observed a true proportion.

It was the grave fault of the excessively lofty pinnacles (beautiful no

doubt in themselves) which were added in 1848,[26] that they destroyed

the true beauty of proportion and the effect of gradual transition which

the fourteenth century builders had succeeded in giving to the tower and

spire, and with which the ancient statues in

[Illustration: S. Mary's Spire from Grove Lane]

their canopied niches were in perfect harmony. For the massive

tower-buttresses are crowned with turrets, showing canopied niches

containing twelve over-life-size statues and decorated with ball-flower

ornament. Two of the statues on the buttresses facing south are modern;

nine others are copies (1895) of the old statues, stored now in the

ancient Congregation House, which still exhibit the carefully calculated

gestures and the studied designs of the original fourteenth century

workers. They form a series which recalls that on the west front of

Wells Cathedral, a rare example of English sculpture in a _genre_ which

is so plentifully and superbly illustrated by the French cathedrals.

On the face of the south buttress of the west front stood the statue,

beautifully posed, of the Virgin with the Infant Christ, the Lady of the

Church thus occupying the most important angle of the tower; on the

left, S. John the Evangelist with the cup. Between the Evangelist and S.

John the Baptist, patron saint of the Chapel of Merton, Walter of Merton

looks out towards the College he founded. These three are from new

designs by Mr Frampton.

On the N.W. angle of the tower is S. Cuthbert of Durham, facing

northwards. He holds in his hand the head of S. Oswald, the Christian

King slain by Penda, and looks towards his own north country and Durham,

the great diocese so intimately connected through its bishops and

monastery with the early collegiate foundations of the Universities.

Northwards, too, towards his cathedral church of Lincoln, faces S. Hugh,

with the wild swan of Stowe nestling to him as was his wont, with its

neck buried in the folds of his sleeve. This statue is on the eastern

buttress at the N.E. angle, and on the eastern face of the same buttress

is an equally noble statue of Edward the Confessor. On the S.E. angle

stands, it may be, the murdered Becket, and among the other figures

Edmund Rich may perhaps be counted.

The chancel and nave are, it will be seen, splendid examples of late

perpendicular. The chancel, in fact, began to be rebuilt in 1462 and

the nave 1487-1498. For the church "was so ruinated in Henry VII. reign

that it could scarce stand," and though it was and is really a parish

church, yet so closely was it bound up with the life and procedure of

the University that the University at length took measures to collect

money for its repair.

They begged, after the approved manner of the great church-builders of

the Middle Ages, from the archbishop downwards, and their begging was so

successful that they built the nave, as we now have it, and the chancel.

In order to secure an appearance of uniformity, the architect

unfortunately altered Adam de Brome's chapel, encasing the outer walls

in the new style, and inserting larger windows. Not content with this,

he likewise converted the old House of Congregation by substituting a

row of large for two rows of small windows, giving thereby a false

impression from the outside, as if the upper and lower stories were one.

The University had no right to the use of S. Mary's. The church was

merely borrowed for sermons and meetings of Congregation, just as S.

Peter's in the East was borrowed for English sermons and S. Mildred's

for meetings of the Faculty of Arts. For the University in its infancy

had little or no property of its own. It could not afford to erect

buildings for its own use. The parish churches, therefore, were used by

favour of the clergy, and lectures were delivered in hired schools.

The need for some University building was, however, severely felt. At

last it was provided for in a small way. "That memorable fabric, the old

Congregation House," and the room above it were begun in 1320 by the

above-mentioned Adam de Brome, at the expense of Thomas Cobham, Bishop

of Worcester. The latter had undertaken to enlarge the old fabric of S.

Mary's Church by erecting a building two stories high immediately to the

east of the tower, on the very site, that is, on which the University

had previously endeavoured to found a chantry. He intended that the

lower room should serve primarily as a meeting-place for the

Congregations of regent-masters, and at other times for parochial

purposes. The upper room was to be used partly as an oratory, and partly

as a general library. But the good bishop's books, which were to form

the nucleus of this library, met with the same fate as Richard de

Bury's. His executors pawned them to defray the expenses of his funeral,

and to pay his debts. Oriel College at their suggestion redeemed the

books, and being also the impropriating rectors of the church, they

claimed to treat both building and library as their own property. But

the masters presently asserted their supposed rights by coming "with a

great multitude" and forcibly carrying away the books from Oriel, "in

autumn, when the fellows were mostly away." They lodged the books in the

upper chamber, and Oriel presently acknowledged the University's

proprietary rights.

The old University library, then, found its home in the upper room of

the old Congregation House, and there remained until the books were

moved to Duke Humphrey's library (1480). From that time till the

erection of Laud's Convocation House, the upper room was used as a

school of law, and also as another Congregation House, distinguished by

the name of "Upper." Meantime a salary was provided for a librarian,

who, besides taking care of the books in the upper chamber, was to pray

for the soul of the donors. Other books were acquired by the University,

either by purchase, bequest, or as unredeemed pledges. Some of these

were kept in chests, and loaned out on security like cash from the other

chests, whilst others were books given or bequeathed to the University,

which were kept chained in the chancel of the church, where the students

might read them. Others, in the upper room, were secured to shelves by

chains that ran on iron bars. These shelves, with desks alongside, would

run out from the walls, between the seven windows, in a manner clearly

shown by such survivals of mediæval libraries as exist at the Bodleian,

Merton and Corpus. The catalogue was in the form of a large board

suspended in the room. At first these books were open for the use of all

students at the specified times, but by later statutes (1412), made

when the library had been increased by further donations and time had

brought bitter experience, the use of them was stringently limited to

graduates or religious of eight years' standing in Philosophia. These

regulations were intended to provide against the overcrowding of the

small library, the disturbance of readers and the destruction of books

by careless, idle and not over-clean boy students. With the object of

preserving the books, a solemn oath was also exacted from all graduates

on admission to their degree, that they would use them well and

carefully. The lower room fulfilled its founder's intention, and here

the Congregation of regents met, whilst the Convocation, or Great

Congregation of regents and non-regents, was held in the chancel of the

church.

Here, then, we may imagine the Chancellor sitting, surrounded by doctors

and masters of the Great Congregation as the scene was formerly depicted

in the great west window of S. Mary's, and is still represented on the

University seal.

I have referred to the "chests" which were kept in the upper chamber.

This was in fact the treasure-house of the University, and here were

stored in great chests doubly and trebly locked, like the "Bodley" chest

in the Bodleian, the books and money with which the University had been

endowed for the benefit of her scholars.

Mr Anstey (_Munimenta Academica_) has given a brilliant little sketch of

the scene which the fancy may conjure up when the new guardians of the

chests were appointed and the chests opened in their presence.

It is the eve of the Festival of S. John at the Latin Gate, in the year

of Grace 1457. To-morrow is the commemoration day of W. de Seltone,

founder of the chest known by his name. Master T. Parys, Principal of S.

Mary Hall, and Master Lowson are the new guardians, the latter the north

countryman of the two. High mass has just been sung with commemoration

collects, and solemn prayers for the repose of the souls of W. de

Seltone and all the faithful departed. It is not a reading (legible)

day, so the church is full. But now all have left, except a few

ragged-looking lads, who still kneel towards the altar, and seem to be

saying their Pater Nosters and Ave Marias, according to their vow, for

their benefactor. Master Parys and Master Lowson, however, have left

earlier; they have passed out of the chancel and made their way into the

old Congregation House for their first inspection of the Seltone Chest.

Each of the guardians draws from beneath his cape a huge key, which he

applies to the locks. At the top lies the register of the contents, in

which is recorded particulars, dates, names and amounts of the loans

granted. The money remaining in one corner of the chest is carefully

counted and compared with the account in the register. Here and there

among valuable MSS. lie other pledges of less peaceful sort but no less

characteristic of a mediæval student's valuable possessions. Here

perhaps are two or three daggers of more than ordinary workmanship, and

there a silver cup or a hood lined with minever. That man in an ordinary

civilian's dress, who stands beside Master Parys, is John More, the

University stationer, and it is his office to fix the value of the

pledges offered, and to take care that none are sold at less than their

real value. It is a motley group that stands around; there are several

masters and bachelors, but more boys and young men in every variety of

coloured dress, blue, red, medley or green. Many of these lads are but

scantily clothed, and all have their attention riveted on the chest,

each with curious eye watching for his pledge, his book or his cup,

brought from some country village, perhaps an old treasure of his

family, and now pledged in his extremity. For last term he could not pay

the principal of his hall seven and sixpence due for the rent of his

miserable garret, or the manciple for his battels, but now he is in

funds again. The remittance, long delayed on the road, has arrived, or

perhaps he has succeeded in earning or begging a sufficient sum to

redeem his pledge. He pulls out the coin from the leathern money-pouch

at his girdle. But among the group you may see one master, whose bearing

and dress plainly denote superior comfort and position. He is wearing

the academical costume of a master, cincture and biretta, gown and hood

of minever. Can it be that he too has been in difficulties? He might

easily have been, for the post was irregular, and rents were not always

punctual in those days. But in this case it is Master Henry Sever,

Warden of Merton, who has lately been making some repairs in the

College, and he has borrowed from the Seltone Chest the extreme sum

permitted by the ordinance, sixty shillings, for that purpose. The

scholars plainly disapprove of his action. They are jealous of his using

the funds of the chest which, they think, were not intended for the

convenience of such as he. Master Sever, however, is filled with anxiety

at the present moment. He has pledged an illuminated missal which far

exceeds in value the sum he has borrowed, and this he omitted to redeem

at the proper time. It is not in the chest. He inquires, and is told

that it has been borrowed for inspection by an intending purchaser, who

has left a silver cup in its place, of more intrinsic value by the

stationer's decision, but not in Mr Sever's opinion. Satisfied that he

will be able to effect an exchange, he departs with the cup in search of

the owner. Other cases are now considered. Some redeem their pledges,

some borrow more monies, some are new customers, and they sorrowfully

deposit their treasures and slink sadly away, not without a titter from

the more hardened bystanders. But before the iron lid closes again, and

the bolts slide back, "Ye shall pray," says Master Parys, addressing the

borrowers, "for the soul of W. de Seltone and all the faithful

departed."

We may pass from this scene in the old Convocation House to another not

less typical of the mediæval University. The Chancellor's court is being

held, and the Chancellor himself is sitting there, or, in his absence,

his commissary. The two proctors are present as assessors, and these

three constitute the court. It is before this tribunal that every member

of the "Privilege" must be tried. For it was only in a University court

that they could be sued in the first instance. Here then, if we attend

this court and glance through the records of ages, we shall find the

Chancellor administering justice, exercising the extensive powers which

he holds as a Justice of the Peace and as almost the supreme authority

over members of the University. True, he had not the power of life and

death, but he could fine or banish, imprison and excommunicate. And as

to the townsmen, he exercised over them a joint jurisdiction with the

mayor and civic authorities. The accused was entitled to have an

advocate to defend him, and he could appeal to the Congregation of

Masters, and thereafter to the Pope. No spiritual cause terminable

within the University could be carried out of it. But in all temporal

cases the ultimate appeal was to the King.

The truculent student, however, was often inclined to appeal to force.

Master John Hodilbeston, it is recorded in the Acts of the Chancellor's

Court (1434), when accused of a certain offence, was observed to have

brought a dagger into the very presence of the Chancellor, contrary to

the statutes, "wherefore he lost his arms to the University and was put

in Bocardo." The next case on the list of this mediæval police court is

that of Thomas Skibbo. He is not a clerk, but he too finds his way to

Bocardo, for he has committed many crimes of violence. Highway robbery

and threats of murder were nothing to him, as a scholar of Bekis-Inn

comes forward to depose, and, besides, he has stolen a serving boy.

After the scholar and the ruffian, the Warden of Canterbury College

steps forward. He has come to make his submission to the commissary,

whom he had declared to be a partial judge, and whose summons he had

refused to obey. Also, he has added injury to insult by encouraging his

scholars to take beer by violence in the streets. The commissary

graciously accepts his apology and his undertaking to keep the peace in

future. The Master of the Great Hall of the University now comes

forward. Evil rumours have been rife, and he wishes to clear his

character of vile slanders that have connected his name with those of

certain women. He brings no charge of slander, but claims the right of

clearing himself by making an affidavit. This was the system of

compurgation, by which a man swore that he was innocent of a crime, and

twelve good friends of his swore that he was speaking the truth. In this

case the Master was permitted to clear himself by oath before the

commissary in Merton College Chapel, and Mistress Agnes Bablake and

divers women appeared and swore with him that rumour was a lying jade.

On another occasion the Principal of White Hall wished to prove his

descent from true English stock. He insisted on being allowed to swear

that he was not a Scotsman. A discreditable rumour to that effect had

doubtless got abroad, without taking tangible form. But he was, he

maintained, a loyal Englishman. "It was greatly to his credit"

doubtless. _Qui s'excuse, s'accuse_, we are inclined to think in such

cases. The appalling penalties which awaited the perjurer probably gave

the ceremony some force at one time. But Dr Gascoigne enters his protest

in the Chancellor's book (1443) against the indiscriminate admission of

parties to compurgation. National feeling and clan feeling ran high.

Gascoigne says that he has known many cases in which people have

privately admitted that they have perjured themselves in public.

Moreover, he added, no townsman ventures to object to a person being

admitted to compurgation, for fear of being murdered or at least maimed.

No good end, therefore, can be answered by it.

But what is the cause of Robert Wright, Esquire-Bedel? He has some

complaint against the master and fellows of Great University Hall

(1456). The Chancellor listens for a moment, and then suggests, like a

modern London police magistrate, that they should settle their quarrel

out of court. They decide to appoint arbitrators, and bind themselves to

abide by their award. The commissary is frequently appointed arbitrator

himself, and his award is usually to the effect that one party shall

humbly ask pardon of the other, pay a sum of money and swear to keep the

peace. Other awards are more picturesque. Thus, when Broadgates and

Pauline Halls decided to settle their quarrel in this way, the

arbitrators ordered the principals mutually to beg reconciliation from

each other for themselves and their parties, and to give either to the

other the kiss of peace and swear upon the Bible to have brotherly love

to each other, under a bond of a hundred shillings. David Phillipe, who

struck John Olney, must kneel to him and ask and receive pardon.

As an earnest of their future good-will, it is often decreed that the

two parties shall entertain their neighbours. Two gallons of ale are

mentioned sometimes as suitable for this purpose; a feast is recommended

at others, and the dishes are specified. As thus:--(1465) The arbiter

decides that neither party in a quarrel which he has been appointed to

settle, shall in future abuse, slander, threaten or make faces at the

other. As a guarantee of their mutual forgiveness and reconciliation,

they are commanded to provide at their joint charges an entertainment in

S. Mary's College. The arbiter orders the dinner; one party is to supply

a goose and a measure of wine, the other bread and beer.

Many and minute are the affairs of the Chancellor. At one time he is

concerned with the taverners. He summons them all before him, and makes

them swear that in future they will brew wholesome beer, and that they

will supply the students with enough of it; at another he imprisons a

butcher who has been selling "putrid and fetid" meat, or a baker who has

been using false weights; at another banishes a carpenter for shooting

at the proctors, or sends a woman to the pillory for being an

incorrigible prostitute or to Bocardo for the mediæval fault of being a

common and intolerable scold. Next he fines the vicar of S. Giles' for

breaking the peace, and confiscates his club. Then he dispatches the

organist of All Souls' to Bocardo, for Thomas Bentlee has committed

adultery. But the poor man weeps so bitterly, that the Warden of that

college is moved to have good hope of the said Thomas, and goes surety

for him, and the "organ-player" is released after three hours of

incarceration. The punishment of a friar who is charged with having

uttered a gross libel in a sermon, and has refused to appear when cited

before the Chancellor's court, is more severe. He is degraded in

congregation and banished.

The jurisdiction which we have seen the Chancellor wielding in this

court had not been always his, and it was acquired not without dust and

heat. At the beginning of the thirteenth century he was both in fact and

in theory the delegate of the bishop of the diocese; not the presiding

head, but an external authority who might be invoked to enforce the

decrees of the Masters' Guild.

Before that time the organisation of the University extended at least so

far as to boast of a "Master of the Schools," who was probably elected

by the masters themselves, and whose office was very likely merged into

that of the Chancellor.

As an ecclesiastical judge, deriving his authority from the Bishop of

Lincoln, the Chancellor exercised jurisdiction over students by virtue

of their being "clerks," not members of the University. Over laymen he

exercised jurisdiction only so far as they were subject to the authority

of the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. At Oxford he had no prison or

Cathedral dungeon to which he could commit delinquents. He was obliged

to send them either to the King's prison in the Castle, or to the town

prison over the Bocardo Gate.

But from this time forward by a series of steps, prepared as a rule by

conflicts between town and gown, the office of Chancellor was gradually

raised. First it encroached on the liberties of the town, and then shook

itself free of its dependence on the See of Lincoln.

The protection of the great, learned and powerful Bishop of Lincoln and

the fact that, in the last resort, the masters were always ready to stop

lecturing and withdraw with all the students to another town, for the

University, as such, had not yet acquired any property to tie them to

Oxford, were weapons which proved of overwhelming advantage to the

University at this early stage of its existence. Again and again we find

that, when a dispute as to police jurisdiction or authority arose

between the University and the town, pressure was brought to bear in

this way. The masters ceased to lecture; the students threatened to

shake the dust of Oxford off their feet; the enthusiastic Grossetete,

throwing aside the cares of State, the business of his bishopric, and

the task of translating the Ethics of Aristotle, came forward to

intervene on behalf of his darling University and to use his influence

with the King. The Pope, Innocent IV. (1254), was also induced to take

the University under his protection. He confirmed its "immunities and

liberties and laudable, ancient and rational customs from whomsoever

received," and called upon the Bishops of London and Salisbury to guard

it from evil. Against the combined forces of the Church, the Crown, and

the evident interests of their own pockets, it was a foregone conclusion

that the citizens would not be able to maintain the full exercise of

their municipal liberty.

It was in 1244 that the first important extension of the Chancellor's

jurisdiction was made. Some students had made a raid upon Jewry and

sacked the houses of their creditors. They were committed to prison by

the civil authorities. Grossetete insisted on their being handed over to

the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As the outcome of this riot Henry III.

presently issued a decree of great importance. By it all disputes

concerning debts, rents and prices, and all other "contracts of

moveables," in which one party was an Oxford clerk, were referred to the

Chancellor for trial. This new power raised him at once to a position

very different from that which he had hitherto enjoyed as the mere

representative of the Bishop of Lincoln. "He was invested henceforth

with a jurisdiction which no Legate or Bishop could confer and no civil

judge could annul." A charter followed in 1248, which authorised the

Chancellor and proctors to assist at the assaying of bread and beer by

the mayor and bailiffs. On admission to office the latter were required

to swear to respect the liberties and customs of the University, and the

town, in its corporate capacity, was made responsible for injuries

inflicted on scholars. The Chancellor's jurisdiction was still further

extended in 1255. To his spiritual power, which he held according to the

ordinary ecclesiastical law and to the civil jurisdiction conferred upon

him in 1244, a new charter now added the criminal jurisdiction even over

laymen, for breach of the peace. By this charter Henry III. provided

that,

"for the peace, tranquillity and advantage of the University of

scholars of Oxford, there be chosen four aldermen and eight

discreet and legal burghers associated with them, to assist the

Mayors and Bailiffs to keep the peace and hold the Assizes and to

seek out malefactors and disturbers of the peace and

night-vagabonds, and harbourers of robbers. Two officers shall also

be elected in each parish to make diligent search for persons of

suspicious character, and every one who takes a stranger in under

his roof for more than three nights must be held responsible for

him. No retail dealer may buy victuals on their way to market or

buy anything with the view of selling again before nine in the

morning, under penalty of forfeit and fine. If a layman assault a

clerk, let him be immediately arrested, and if the assault prove

serious, let him be imprisoned in the Castle and detained there

untill he give satisfaction to the clerk in accordance with the

judgment of the Chancellor and the University. If a clerk shall

make a grave or outrageous assault upon a layman, let him be

imprisoned in the aforesaid Castle untill the Chancellor demand his

surrender; if the offence be a light one, let him be confined in

the town prison untill he be set free by the Chancellor.

"Brewers and bakers are not to be punished for the first offence

(of adulteration or other tradesman's tricks); but shall forfeit

their stock on the second occasion, and for the third offence be

put in the pillory." (One of these "hieroglyphic State machines"

stood opposite the Cross Inn at Carfax; another, with stocks and

gallows, at the corner of Longwall and Holywell Streets. In the

former one Tubb was the last man to stand (1810), for perjury,

though not the last to deserve it.) "Every baker," the charter

continues, "must have his own stamp and stamp his own bread so that

it may be known whose bread it is; every one who brews for sale

must show his sign, or forfeit his beer. Wine must be sold to

laymen and clerks on the same terms. The assay of bread and ale is

to be made half yearly, and at the assay the Chancellor or his

deputy appointed for that purpose must be present; otherwise the

assay shall be invalid."

A few years later a Royal Writ of Edward I. (1275) conferred on the

Chancellor the cognizance of all personal actions whatever wherein

either party was a scholar, be he prosecutor or defendant. And in 1290,

by judgment of King and Parliament, after a conflict between the town

and University, when a bailiff had resisted the authority of the

Chancellor in the students' playground, Beaumont Fields, which embraced

the University Park and S. Giles', the Chancellor obtained jurisdiction

in case of all crimes committed in Oxford, where one of the parties was

a scholar, except pleas of homicide and mayhem. His jurisdiction over

the King's bailiffs was affirmed, but leave was granted them to apply to

the King's court if aggrieved by the Chancellor's proceedings.

From this time forward the authority of the Chancellor was gradually

increased and extended. It was, indeed, not long before the office shook

itself free from its historical subordination to the Bishop of Lincoln.

After a considerable struggle over the point, the bishop was worsted by

a Papal Bull (1368), which entirely abrogated his claim to confirm the

Chancellor elect. Since that time the University has enjoyed the right

of electing and admitting its highest officer without reference to any

superior authority whatever (Maxwell Lyte).

The precinct of the University was defined in the reign of Henry IV. as

extending to the Hospital of S. Bartholomew on the east, to Botley on

the west, to Godstow on the north, and to Bagley Wood on the south.

These were the geographical limits of the University, and within them

the following classes of people were held (1459) to be "of the privilege

of the University":--The Chancellor, all doctors, masters and other

graduates, and all students, scholars and clerks of every order and

degree. These constituted a formidable number in themselves when arrayed

against the town, for there were probably at least 3000 of them at the

most flourishing periods. The Archbishop of Armagh indeed stated

confidently at Avignon (1357) that there had once been 30,000, but that

must have been a rhetorical exaggeration. There can never have been more

than 4000. But in addition to this army of scholars, all their "daily

continual servants," all "barbers, manciples, spencers, cokes,

lavenders," and all the numerous persons who were engaged in trades

ancillary to study, such as the preparation, engrossing, illumination

and binding of parchment, were "of the privilege" and directly

controlled by the University. In what was afterwards known as Schools

Street all these trades were represented as early as 1190. Over these

classes, and within the limits defined, the jurisdiction of the

Chancellor was by the end of the fifteenth century established supreme.

Citizens and scholars alike had now to be careful how they lived. The

stocks, the pillory and the cucking stool awaited offenders among the

townsmen, fines or banishment the students who transgressed. Local

governments in the Middle Ages were excessively paternal. They inquired

closely into the ways of their people and dealt firmly with their

peccadilloes. Did a man brew or sell bad beer he was burnt alive at

Nürnberg; at Oxford he was condemned to the pillory; if a manciple was

too fond of cards he was also punished by the Chancellor's court. A

regular tariff was framed of penalties for those breaches of the peace

and street brawls, in which not freshmen only but heads of houses and

vicars of parishes were so frequently involved.

Endeavours were made to promote a proper standard of life by holding

"General Inquisitions" at regular intervals. The town was divided into

sections, and a Doctor of Theology and two Masters of Arts were told off

to inquire into the morals of the inhabitants of each division. Juries

of citizens were summoned, and gave evidence on oath to these delegate

judges who sat in the parish churches. The characters of their

fellow-townsmen were critically discussed. Reports were made to the

Chancellor, who corrected the offenders. Excommunication, penance or the

cucking stool were meted out to "no common" scolds, notorious

evil-livers and those who kept late hours.

It had formerly been enacted (1333) that since the absence of the

Chancellor was the cause of many perils, his office should become vacant

if he were to absent himself from the University for a month during full

term. But in the course of the fifteenth century the Chancellor changed

from a biennial and resident official to a permanent and non-resident

one. He was chosen now for his power as a friend at court, and by the

court, as it grew more despotic and ecclesiastically minded, he was used

as an agent for coercing the University.

To-day the Chancellorship is a merely honorary office, usually bestowed

on successful politicians. The Chancellor appoints a Vice-Chancellor,

but usage compels him to appoint heads of houses in order of seniority.

This right of appointment dates from the time when the Duke of

Wellington, as Chancellor, dispensed with the formality of asking

convocation for its assent to the appointment of his nominee.

Having sketched thus far the development of the office which represents

the power and dignity of the University, we may now turn to consider the

position of the young apprentices from their earliest initiation into

this guild of learning.

The scholars of mediæval Universities were your true cosmopolitans. They

passed freely from the University of one country to that of another by

virtue of the freemasonry of knowledge. Despising the dangers of the

sea, the knight-errants of learning went from country to country, like

the bee, to use the metaphor applied by S. Athanasius to S. Anthony, in

order to obtain the best instruction in every school. They went without

let or hindrance, with no passport but the desire to learn, to Paris,

like John of Salisbury, Stephen Langton or Thomas Becket, if they were

attracted by the reputation of that University in Theology; to Bologna,

if they wished to sit at the feet of some famous lecturer in Civil Law.

Emperors issued edicts for their safe conduct and protection when

travelling in their dominions--even when warring against the Scots,

Edward III. issued general letters of protection for all Scottish

scholars who desired to repair to Oxford or Cambridge--and when they

arrived at their destination, of whatever nationality they might be,

they found there as a rule little colonies of their own countrymen

already established and ready to receive them. Dante was as much at home

in the straw-strewn Schools Street in Paris as he would have found

himself at Padua or at Oxford, had he chanced to study there.

It has indeed been suggested that he did study there in the year 1313.

Like Chaucer, he may have done so, but probably did not. There is

certainly a reference to Westminster in the "Inferno" (xii. 119); but it

is not necessary to go to Oxford in order to learn that London and

Westminster are on the banks of the Thames.

In attending lectures at a strange University the mediæval students had

no difficulty in understanding the language of their teachers. For all

the learned world spoke Latin. Latin was the Volapuk of the Middle Ages.

Mediæval Latin, with all its faults and failing sense of style, is a

language not dead, but living in a green old age, written by men who on

literary matters talked and thought in a speech that is lively and free

and fertile in vocabulary. The common use of it among all educated men

gave authors like Erasmus a public which consisted of the whole

civilised world, and it rendered scholars cosmopolitan in a sense almost

inconceivable to the student of to-day. That was chiefly in the earlier

days of Universities. Gradually, with the growth of national feeling and

the more definite demarcation of nations and the ever-increasing sense

of patriotism, that higher form of selfishness, cosmopolitanism went out

of fashion. Nowadays only two classes of cosmopolitans survive--in

theory, free traders, and in practice, thieves.

I have spoken of the dangers of the sea; they were very great in those

days of open sailing boats, when the compass was unknown; but the

dangers of land-travelling were hardly less. The roads through the

forests that lay around Oxford were notoriously unsafe, not only in

mediæval days but even a hundred years ago. Armed therefore, and if

possible in companies, the students would ride on their Oxford

pilgrimage. If they could not afford to ride, the mediæval pedagogue,

the common carrier, would take them to their destination for a charge of

fivepence a day. For there were carriers who took a regular route at the

beginning of every University year for the purpose of bringing students

up from the country. They would have a mixed company of all ages in

their care. For though students went up to Oxford as a rule between the

ages of thirteen and sixteen, many doubtless were younger and many

older. It was indeed a common thing for ecclesiastics of all ages to

obtain leave of absence from their benefices in order to go up to the

University and study Canon Law or Theology there. You can fancy, then,

this motley assembly of pack-horses and parish priests, of clever lads

chosen from the monasteries or grammar schools, and ambitious lads from

the plough, all very genuine philosophers, lovers of learning for its

own sake or its advantages, working their way through the miry roads,

passed occasionally by some nobleman's son with his imposing train of

followers, and passing others yet more lowly, who were just trudging it

on foot, begging their way, their bundles on their shoulders.

You can fancy them at last coming over Shotover Hill, down the "horse

path" past S. Clement's, and so reaching safely their journey's end.

Once in Oxford, they would take up their abode in a monastery to which

they had an introduction; in a college, if, thanks to the fortune of

birth or education, they had been elected to share in the benefits of a

foundation; as menials attached to the household of some wealthier

student, if they were hard put to it; in a hall or house licensed to

take in lodgers, if they were foreigners or independent youths. On

taking up his residence in one of these halls, the mediæval student

would find that Alma Mater, in her struggles with the townsmen, had been

fighting his battles. Lest he should fall among thieves, it had been

provided that the rents charged should be fixed by a board of assessors;

lest the sudden influx of this floating population should produce

scarcity, and therefore starvation prices, the transactions of the

retailers were carefully regulated. They were forbidden to buy up

provisions from the farmers outside the city, and so establish a

"corner"; they were forbidden even to buy in Oxford market till a

certain hour in the morning. The prices of vendibles were fixed in the

interests of the poor students. Thus in 1315 the King ordained that "a

good living ox, stalled or corn-fed, should be sold for 16s., and no

higher; if fatted with grass for 14s. A fat cow, 12s. A fat hog of two

years old, 3s. 4d. A fat mutton, corn-fed or whose wool is not grown,

1s. 8d. A fat mutton shorn, 1s. 2d. A fat goose, 2d. A fat hen or two

chickens, one penny. Four pigeons or twenty-four eggs, one penny."

The halls were, at any rate originally, merely private houses adapted to

the use of students. A common room for meals, a kitchen and a few

bedrooms were all they had to boast. Many of them had once belonged to

Jews, for they were large and built of stone. And the Jews, being

wealthy, had introduced a higher standard of comfort into Oxford, and at

the same time, being a common sort of prey, they probably found that

stone houses were safer as well as more luxurious. Moysey's Hall and

Lombard's Hall bore in their names evident traces of their origin. Other

halls derived their names from other causes. After the great fire in

1190 the citizens, in imitation of the Londoners, and the Jews, had

rebuilt their houses of stone.

[Illustration: S. Alban's Hall

Merton College]

"Such tenements," says Wood, "were for the better distinction from

others called Stone or Tiled halls. Some of those halls that were

not slated were, if standing near those that were, stiled Thatched

halls. Likewise when glass came into fashion, for before that time

our windows were only latticed, that hall that had its windows

first glazed was stiled, for difference sake, Glazen hall. In like

manner 'tis probable that those that had leaden gutters, or any

part of their roofs of lead were stiled Leaden hall, or in one

instance Leaden porch. Those halls also that had staples to their

doors, for our predecessors used only latch and catch, were written

Staple halls."

Other halls were called after their owners (Peckwater's Inn, Alban Hall,

etc.), or from their position in the street or town, or the patron Saint

of a neighbouring church (S. Edward's Hall, S. Mary's Entry); many from

other physical peculiarities besides those we have mentioned. Angle

Hall, Broadgates Hall, White Hall and Black Hall explain themselves

easily enough, whilst Chimney Hall is a name which recalls the days when

a large chimney was a rarity, a louvre above a charcoal fire in the

middle of the room being sufficient to carry off the smoke. Other halls,

again, were named after signs that hung outside them, or over their

gateways, like ordinary inns or shops. The towering and barbaric

inn-signs always struck foreigners, when first visiting England, with

astonishment not unmingled with dismay. They were thus probably thrown

into a proper state of mind to receive their bills.

The Eagle, the Lion, the Elephant, the Saracen's Head, the Brazen Nose

and the Swan were some of the signs in Oxford. There are a few survivals

from this menagerie.

The Star Inn, now the Clarendon, was built on the site of one of these

old Halls, and the richly-carved wooden gables were visible in the house

next to it. The Roebuck was once Coventry Hall. The Mitre preserved

traces of Burwaldscote Hall. The Angel had similar traces, but the Angel

itself has now given place to the New Schools. Many students, however,

lodged singly in private houses. Chaucer's _poor scholar_ lodged with a

carpenter who worked for the Abbot of Osney.

"A chamber had he in that hostelrie,

Alone, withouten any compagnie,

Ful fetisly ydight with herbes sote."...

Halls, it will have been observed, were known also by the name of

entries and inns or (deriving from the French) hostels. And that in fact

is what they were. The principal, who might originally have been the

senior student of a party who had taken a house in which to study, or

the owner of the house himself, derived a good income from keeping a

boarding-house of this kind. He was responsible to the University for

the good conduct of his men, and to his men, one must suppose, for their

comfort. The position of principal was soon much sought after, and the

ownership of a good hostel, with a good connection, would fetch a price

like a public-house to-day.

It was found necessary, however, to decree that the principal of a hall

should be a master, and should not cater for the other inmates. Payments

for food were therefore made by the students to an upper servant, known

as a manciple, whose duty it was to go to market in the morning and

there buy provisions for the day, before the admission of the

retail-dealers at nine o'clock. The amount which each student

contributed to the common purse for the purchase of provisions was known

as "Commons." It varied from eight to eighteen pence a week. Extra food

obtained from the manciple to be eaten in private was called "Battels."

The principal could only maintain his position and fill his hall if he

satisfied the students. The government of these halls was therefore

highly democratic. A new principal could only succeed if he was accepted

by the general opinion of the inmates and received their voluntary

allegiance.

On coming up to Oxford the student, however little he might intend to

devote his life to the Church, adopted, if he had not done so before,

clerical tonsure and clerical garb. By so doing he became entitled to

all the immunities and privileges of the clerical order. He was, now, so

long as he did not marry, exempt from the secular courts, and his person

was inviolable.

No examination or ceremony of any kind seems to have been required in

order to become a member of the University. Attendance at lectures,

after a declaration made to a resident master to the effect that the

student purposed to attend them, was enough to entitle him to the

privileges of that corporation.

The germ of the modern system of matriculation may perhaps be traced in

the statute (1420), which required that all scholars and scholars'

servants, who had attained years of discretion, should swear before the

Chancellor that they would observe the statutes for the repression of

riots and disorders.

Among the students themselves, however, some form of initiation probably

took place, comparable to that of the Bejaunus, or Yellow-bill, in

Germany, or of the young soldier, the young Freemason, or the newcomer

at an _atelier_ in Paris to-day. Horseplay at the expense of the raw

youth, and much chaff and tomfoolery, would be followed in good time by

a supper for which the freshman would obligingly pay. Initiation of this

kind is a universal taste, and, if kept within bounds, is not a bad

custom for testing the temper and grit of the new members of a

community. At Oxford, then, freshmen were subject to certain customs at

the hands of the senior scholars, or sophisters, on their first coming.

So Wood tells us, but he cannot give details. He compares the ceremony,

however, to the "salting" which obtained in his own day. Of this

salting, as it was practised at Merton, he gives the following

account:--

"On Feast days charcoal fires were lit in the Hall of Merton, and

between five and six in the afternoon the senior undergraduates

would bring in the Freshmen, and make them sit down on a form in

the middle of the Hall. Which done, everyone in order was to speak

some pretty apothegm or make a jest or bull or speak some eloquent

nonsense, to make the company laugh. But if any of the Freshmen

came off dull, or not cleverly, some of the forward or pragmatical

seniors would _tuck_ them, that is, set the nail of their thumb to

their chin just under the lower lip, and by the help of their other

fingers under the chin, would give him a mark which would sometimes

produce blood." On Shrove Tuesday a brass pot was set before the

fire filled with cawdle by the College Cook at the Freshmen's

expense. Then each of them had to pluck off his gown and band and

if possible make himself look like a scoundrel. 'Which done they

were conducted each after the other to the High Table, made to

stand upon a form and to deliver a speech.' Wood gives us the

speech he himself made on this occasion, a dreary piece of

facetiousness. As a 'kitten of the Muses and meer frog of Helicon

he croaked cataracts of plumbeous cerebrosity.'

"The reward for a good speech was a cup of cawdle and no salted

drink, for an indifferent one some cawdle and some salted drink,

and for a bad one, besides the tucks, nothing but College beer and

salt.

"When these ceremonies were over the senior cook administered an

oath over an old shoe to those about to be admitted into the

fraternity. The Freshman repeated the oath, kissed the shoe, put on

his gown and band and took his place among the seniors."

When the freshmen of the past year were solemnly made seniors, and

probationers were admitted fellows, similar ceremonies took place. At

All Souls', for instance, on 14th January, those who were to be admitted

fellows were brought from their chambers in the middle of the night,

sometimes in a bucket slung on a pole, and so led about the college and

into the hall, whilst some of the junior fellows, disguised perhaps,

would sing a song in praise of the mallard, some verses of which I give:

"The griffin, bustard, turkey and capon,

Let other hungry mortals gape on,

And on their bones with stomachs fall hard,

But let All Souls' men have the mallard.

Hough the blood of King Edward, by the blood of

King Edward,

It was a swapping, swapping mallard.

"The Romans once admired a gander

More than they did their best commander,

Because he saved, if some don't fool us,

The place that's named from the scull of Tolus.

Hough the blood of King Edward, by the blood of

King Edward,

It was a swapping, swapping mallard.

"Then let us drink and dance a galliard

In the remembrance of the mallard,

And as the mallard doth in the pool,

Let's dabble, dive and duck in bowle.[27]

Hough, etc."

In any attempt to appreciate the kind and character of the mediæval

students and the life which they led, it is necessary first of all to

realise that the keynote of the early student life was poverty. It was

partly for the benefit of poor scholars and partly for the benefit of

their founders' souls, for which these scholars should pray, that the

early colleges and chantries were founded. Morals, learning and poverty

were the qualifications for a fellowship on Durham's foundation.

Poverty, "the stepmother of learning," it is which the University in its

letters and petitions always and truly represents as the great hindrance

to the student "seeking in the vineyard of the Lord the pearl of

knowledge." Books these poor seekers could not afford to buy, fees they

could scarce afford to pay, food itself was none too plentiful.

But the pearl for which the young student as he sat, pinched and blue,

at the feet of his teacher in the schools, and the Masters of Arts,

"When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped

And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung,"

alike were searching, was a pearl of great price. For learning spelt

success. There was through learning a career open to the talents. The

lowliest and neediest might rise, by means of a University education, to

the highest dignity which the Church, and that was also the world, could

offer.

For all great civilians were ecclesiastics. The Church embraced all the

professions; and the professors of all arts, of medicine, statesmanship

or architecture, of diplomacy and even of law, embraced the Church. And

the reward of success in any of them was ecclesiastical promotion and a

fat benefice. The University opened the door to the Church, with all its

dazzling possibilities of preferment, and the University itself was

thrown open to the poorest by the system of the monastic houses and

charitable foundations.

Promising lads, too, of humble origin were often maintained at the

schools by wealthy patrons. From a villein one might rise to be a clerk,

from a clerk become a master of the University--a fellow, a bursar, a

bishop and a chancellor, first of Oxford, then of England.

At the University, of course, the students were not treated with the

same absolute equality that they are now, regardless of birth or wealth.

Sons of noblemen did not study there, unless they had a strong bent in

that direction. The days were not yet come when a University training

was valuable as a social and moral as well as an intellectual education:

when noblemen, therefore, did attend the schools, more was made of them.

They wore hoods lined with rich fur, and enjoyed certain privileges with

regard to the taking of degrees.

Like those idyllic islanders who lived by taking in each other's

washing, the masters supported themselves on the fees paid by the

students who attended their lectures, whilst the poorest students earned

a livelihood by waiting on the masters, or wealthier students.

Servitors, who thus combined the careers of undergraduates with those of

"scouts," continued in existence till the end of the eighteenth century.

They were sent on the most menial errands or employed to transcribe

manuscripts, and five shillings was deemed an ample allowance for their

services. Whitfield was a servitor, and the father of the Wesleys also.

Such students, lads of low extraction, drawn from the tap-room or the

plough, but of promising parts, would be helped by the chests which we

have described, and which were founded for their benefit. When Long

Vacation came, they would turn again from intellectual to manual labour.

For Long Vacation meant for them, not reading-parties, but the harvest,

and in the harvest they could earn wages. But there was another method

of obtaining the means to attend lectures at the University which was

popularised in the Middle Ages by the Mendicants, by the theory of the

poverty of Christ and by the insistence of the Church on the duty of

charity. This was begging on the highway. "Pain por Dieu aus escoliers"

was a well-known "street cry" in mediæval Paris, and in England during

vacations the wandering scholar,

"Often, starting from some covert place,

Saluted the chance comer on the road,

Crying, 'An obolus, a penny give

To a poor scholar.'"

And as they made their way along the high-road a party of such begging

scholars would come perhaps to a rich man's house, and ask for aid by

prayer and song. Sometimes they would be put to the test as to their

scholarship by being commanded to make a couplet of Latin verses on some

topic. They would scratch their heads, look wistfully at one another and

produce a passable verse or two. Then they would receive their reward

and pass on. So popular, indeed, did this system become, that begging

students had to be restricted. Only those licensed by the Chancellor

and certified as deserving cases, like the scholars of Aristotle's Hall

in 1461, were presently permitted to beg.

Where poverty was so prevalent, the standard of comfort was not likely

to be high. The enormous advance in the general level of material

comfort, and even luxury, which has taken place in this country during

the last hundred years, makes it difficult to describe the comfortless

lives of these early students without giving an exaggerated idea of the

sacrifices they were making and the hardships they were enduring for the

sake of setting their feet on the first rung of this great ladder of

learning. But it should be remembered that, as far as the ordinary

appliances of decency and comfort, as we understand them, are concerned,

the labourer's cottage in these days is better supplied than was a

palace in those when princes

"At matins froze and couched at curfew time,"

and when

"Lovers of truth, by penury constrained

Bucer, Erasmus or Melancthon, read

Before the doors or windows of their cells

By moonshine, through mere lack of taper light."

If we realise that this was the case, we shall not be surprised to find

that the rooms in which these students and masters lived, so far from

being spacious and luxurious, were small, dingy, overcrowded and

excessively uncomfortable. It was rare for a student to have a room to

himself--"alone, withouten any compagnie." The usual arrangement in

halls and colleges would seem to have been that two or more scholars

shared a room, and slept in that part of it which was not occupied by

the "studies" of the inhabitants. For each scholar would have a "study"

of his own adjoining the windows, where he might strain to catch the

last ray of daylight. A "study" was a movable piece of furniture, a sort

of combination of book-shelf and desk, which probably survives in the

Winchester "toys." The students shared a room, and they frequently

shared a bed too. The founder of Magdalen provided that in his college

Demies under the age of fifteen should sleep two in a bed. And in

addition to their beds and lodgings, the poorest students were obliged

to share an academical gown also. Friends who had all things in common,

might sleep at the same time, but could only attend lectures one by one,

for lack of more than one gown amongst them. To these straits, it is

said, S. Richard was reduced. But such deprivation accentuates rather

than spoils the happiness of student life, as anyone who is acquainted

with the Quartier Latin will agree. When the heart is young and

generous, when the spirit is free and the blood is hot, what matters

hardship when there are comrades bright and brave to share it; what

matters poverty when the riches of art and love and learning are being

outspread before your eyes; what matters the misery of circumstance,

when daily the young traveller can wander forth, silent, amazed, into

"the realms of gold?"

During the many centuries that the mansions of the wealthy and the

palaces of princes were totally unprovided with the most indispensable

appliances of domestic decency, it is not to be expected that the rooms

of students should prove to be plentifully or luxuriously furnished. We

know the stock-in-trade of Chaucer's poor student:

"His Almageste and bokes grete and smale

His astrelabie, longinge for his art,

His augrim-stones layen faire apart

On shelves couched at his beddes heed;

His presse y-covered with a falding reed.

And al above ther lay a gay sautrye

On which he made a nightes melodye

So swetely, that all the chambre rong;

And Angelus ad virginem he song."

We can supplement Chaucer's inventory of a poor student's furniture by

an examination of old indentures. Therein we find specified among the

goods of such an one just such a fithele or "gay sautrye" as Chaucer

noted, an old cithara or a broken lute, a desk, a stool, a chair, a

mattress, a coffer, a tripod table, a mortar and pestle, a sword and an

old gown. Another student might boast the possession of a hatchet, a

table "quinque pedum cum uno legge," some old wooden dishes, a pitcher

and a bowl, an iron twister, a brass pot with a broken leg, a pair of

knives, and, most prized of all, a bow and twenty arrows. Few could

boast of so many "bokes at his beddes heed" as Chaucer's clerk of

Oxenford. Manuscripts were of immense value in those days, and we need

hardly be surprised if that worthy philosopher, seeing that he had

invested his money in twenty volumes clad in black and red, had but

little gold remaining in his coffer. The books that we find mentioned in

such indentures, are those which formed the common stock of mediæval

learning, volumes of homilies, the works of Boethius, Ovid's _De remedio

amoris_ and a book of geometry. These and other books, as articles of

the highest intrinsic value, were always mentioned in detail in the last

will and testament of a dying scholar. But, as the modern artist, on his

death-bed in the Quartier Latin, summoned his dearest friend to his side

and exclaimed, "My friend, I leave you my wife and my pipe. Take care of

my pipe"; so the mediæval student would often feel that though his books

might be his most valuable legacy in some eyes, his bow and arrows, his

cap and gown or his mantle, "blodii coloris," these were the truest

pledges of affection that he could bequeath to the comrade of his heart.

Only the wealthier students, or the higher officials of the University,

rejoiced in such luxuries as a change of clothes, or could reckon among

their furniture several forms or chairs, a pair of snuffers and bellows.

For of what use to the ordinary student were candlesticks and snuffers,

when candles cost the prohibitive price of twopence a pound; or what

should he do with bellows and tongs when a stove or fire was out of the

question, save in the case of a Principal? To run about in order not to

go to bed with cold feet was the plan of the mediæval student, unless

he anticipated the advice of Mr Jorrocks and thought of ginger.

From his slumbers on a flock bed, in such quarters as I have described,

the mediæval student roused him with the dawn. For lectures began with

the hour of prime, soon after daybreak. He was soon dressed, for men

seldom changed their clothes in those days, and in the centuries when

the manuals of gallantry recommended the nobleman to wash his hands once

a day and his face almost as often, when a charming queen like Margaret

of Navarre, could remark without shame that she had not washed her hands

for eight days, it is not to be expected that the ablutions of a mere

student should be frequent or extensive. Washing is a modern habit, and

not widespread. To attend a "chapel" or a "roll-call" is the first duty

of the modern undergraduate, but a daily attendance at mass was not

required till the college system had taken shape; the statutes of New

College, in fact, are the first to enforce it. All therefore that the

yawning student had to do, before making his way to the lecture-room in

the hall of his inn or college, or in the long low buildings of Schools

Street, was to break his fast, if he could afford to do so, with a piece

of bread and a pot o' the smallest ale from the "Buttery." As a lecture

lasted, not the one hour of a "Stunde," but for two or three hours, some

such support would be highly desirable, but not necessary. Our

forefathers were one-meal men, like the Germans of to-day. Civilisation

is an advance from breakfast to dinner, from one meal a day to several.

Late dinner is the goal towards which all humanity presses. For

dinner-time, as De Quincey observed, has little connection with the idea

of dinner. It has travelled through every hour, like the hand of a

clock, from nine or ten in the morning till ten at night. But at Oxford

it travelled slowly. Hearne growls at the colleges which, in 1723,

altered their dinner hour from eleven to twelve, "from people's lying in

bed longer than they used to do." Happily for him he did not live to see

the beginning of the nineteenth century, when those colleges which had

dined at three advanced to four, and those that had dined at four to

five; or the close of it, when the hour of seven became the accepted

time.

The mediæval student took his one meal at ten or eleven in the morning.

Soup thickened with oatmeal, baked meat and bread was his diet, varied

by unwholesome salt fish in Lent. These viands were served in hall on

wooden trenches and washed down by a tankard of college beer. During the

meal a chapter of the Bible or of some improving work in Latin was read

aloud, and at its conclusion the founder's prayer and a Latin grace

would be said. Conversation, it was usually ordained, might only be

carried on in Latin; the modern student, on the contrary, is "sconced"

(fined a tankard of beer) if he speaks three words of "shop" in hall.

After dinner perhaps some disputations or exercises, some repetition and

discussion of the morning's lecture would be held in hall, or the

students would take the air, walking out two and two, as the founders

directed, if they were good; going off singly, or in parties to poach or

hawk or spoil for a row, if they were not. Lectures or disputations were

resumed about noon.

Seated on benches, or more usually and properly, according to the

command of Urban V., sitting on the rush-strewn floors of the

school-room, the young seekers after knowledge listened to the words of

wisdom that flowed from the regent master, who sat above them at a

raised desk, dressed in full academical costume. Literally, they sat at

the feet of their Gamaliels.

In the schools they were enjoined to "sit as quiet as a girl," but they

were far from observing this injunction. Old and young were only too

ready to quarrel or to play during lectures, to shout and interrupt

whilst the master was reading the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and bang

the benches with their books to express their approval or disapproval of

his comments thereon.

Supper came at five, and after that perhaps a visit to the playing

fields of Beaumont or a tavern, where wine would be mingled with song,

and across the oaken tables would thunder those rousing choruses that

students ever love:

"Mihi est propositum in taberna mori

Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,

Ut dicant, quum venerint, angelorum chori,

'Deus sit propitius huic potatori.'"

When curfew rang at length, all the students would assemble in hall and

have a "drinking" or "collation." Then, before going to bed, they would

sing the Antiphon of the Virgin (Salve Regina), and so the day was

finished. A dull, monotonous day it seems to us, varied only by

sermons--and there was no lack of them--at S. Mary's or S. Peter's in

the East, with the chance excitement of hearing a friar recant the

unorthodox views he had expressed the previous Sunday; but it was a day

that was bright and social compared with the ordinary conditions of the

time.

In this daily round, so far as one has been able to reconstruct it, the

absence of any provision for physical recreation is a noticeable thing

to us, who have exchanged the mediæval enthusiasm for learning for an

enthusiasm for athletics. Both are excellent things in their way, but as

the governor of an American State remarked when defending the practice

of smoking over wine, both together are better than either separate. And

nowadays in some cases the combination is happily attained. But in an

age which inherited the monkish tradition of the vileness of the body

and the need of mortifying it, games of all sorts were regarded as a

weakness of the flesh. So far were founders from making any provision

for recreation, that they usually went out of their way to prohibit it.

Games with bat and ball, and tennis, that is, or fives, were strictly

forbidden as indecent, though in some cases students were permitted to

play with a soft ball in the college courts. But "deambulation in the

College Grove" was the monastic ideal. Nor did the founders frown only

on exercise; amusements of the most harmless sort were also under their

ban. On the long, cold, dark winter evenings the students were naturally

tempted to linger in the hall after supper, to gather round the fire, if

there was one, in the middle of the room, beneath the louvre, to tell

tales there and sing carols, to read poems, chronicles of the realm or

wonders of the world. But it was only on the eve of a festival that

William of Wykeham would allow this relaxation in his foundation. The

members of Trinity College were allowed to play cards in hall on

holidays only, "but on no account for money." Mummers, the chief source

of amusement among the mediævals, were only permitted to enter New

College once a year, on Twelfth Night. It was not till the dawn of the

Renaissance that plays began to be acted in the colleges and halls, and

to bring the academic intellect into touch with the views and literature

of the people.

Not only was it forbidden to play marbles on the college steps, but even

the hard exercise of chess was prohibited as a "noxious, inordinate and

unhonest game." And the keeping of dogs and hawks was anathema.

By a survival of this mediæval view, the undergraduate is still solemnly

warned by the statute book against playing any game which may cause

injury to others; he is urged to refrain from hunting wild beasts with

ferrets, nets or hounds, from hawking, "necnon ab omni apparatu et

gestatione bombardarum et arcubalistarum." In the same way he is

forbidden still to carry arms of any sort by day or night, unless it be

bows and arrows for purposes of honest amusement. But to these

injunctions, I fear, as to the accompanying threat of punishment at the

discretion of the Vice-Chancellor, he does not pay over much attention.

He does not consider them very seriously when he plays football or hunts

with the "Bicester," takes a day's shooting or runs with the Christ

Church beagles.

The restrictions which I have quoted above were mostly introduced by the

founders of colleges. So far as the University was concerned, the

private life of the student was hardly interfered with at all.

The offence of night-walking, indeed, was repressed by the proctor who

patrolled the streets with a pole-axe and bulldogs (armed attendants),

but the student might frequent the taverns and drink as he pleased. His

liberty was almost completely unrestricted, except as to the wearing of

academic dress, the attendance of lectures and the observance of the

curfew bell. Offences against morality and order were treated as a rule,

when they were dealt with at all, with amazing leniency. Murder was

regarded as a very venial crime; drunkenness and loose-living as hardly

matters for University police. A student who committed murder was

usually banished, and banishment after all meant to him little more than

changing his seat of learning. The punishment, though it might cause

inconvenience, did not amount to more than being compelled to go to

Cambridge. Fines, excommunication and imprisonment were the other

punishments inflicted for offences; corporal punishment was but seldom

imposed by the University. But with the growth of the college system the

bonds of discipline were tightened. Not only did the statutes provide in

the greatest detail for the punishment of undergraduate offences,

stating the amount of the fine to be exacted for throwing a missile at a

master and missing, and the larger amount for aiming true, but also the

endowment of the scholar made it easy to collect the fine. The wardens

and fellows, too, were in a stronger position than the principal of a

hall, who owed his place to his popularity with the students, who, if he

ceased to please them, might leave his hall and remove to another house

where the principal was more lenient and could be relied upon to wink at

their follies and their vices, even if he did not share them. Thus the

founders of the early colleges were enabled to enforce upon the

recipients of their bounty something of the rigour and decency of

monastic discipline. As the system grew the authority entrusted to the

heads of colleges was increased, and the position of the undergraduate

was reduced to that of the earlier grammar-school boy. The statutes of

B.N.C. (1509) rendered the undergraduate liable to be birched at the

discretion of the college lecturer. He might now be flogged if he had

not prepared his lessons; if he played, laughed or talked in lecture; if

he made odious comparisons, or spoke English; if he were unpunctual,

disobedient or did not attend chapel. Wolsey allowed the students of

Cardinal College to be flogged up to the age of twenty.

Impositions by a dean were apparently a sixteenth-century invention.

Then we find offending fellows who had played inordinately at hazard or

cards, or earned a reputation for being notorious fighters or great

frequenters of taverns, being ordered to read in their college libraries

for a fortnight from 6 to 7 A.M. And the loss of a month's commons

occasionally rewarded the insolence of undergraduates who did not duly

cap and give way to their seniors, or who, yielding to that desire to

adorn their persons which the mediæval student shared with his

gaudy-waistcoated successors, wore "long undecent[28] hair," and cloth

of no clerical hue, slashed doublets and boots and spurs beneath their

gowns.

As to the academic career of the mediæval student; the course of his

studies and "disputations" in the schools; the steps by which the

"general sophister" became a "determining bachelor" and the bachelor, if

he wished to teach, took a master's degree, first obtaining the

Chancellor's licence to lecture, and then, on the occasion of his

"inception," when he "commenced master" and first undertook his duty of

teaching in the schools, being received into the fraternity of teaching

masters by the presiding master of his faculty--of these ceremonies and

their significance and the traces of them which survive in modern

academic life, as of the high feastings and banquetings with which, as

in the trade guilds, the new apprentices and masters entertained their

faculties, I have no space here to treat.

The inceptor besides undertaking not to lecture at Stamford, recognise

any University but Oxford and Cambridge, or maintain Lollard opinions,

was also required to swear to wear a habit suitable to his degree. As an

undergraduate he had had no academical dress, except that, as every

member of the University was supposed to be a clerk, he was expected to

wear the tonsure and clerical habit. The characteristic of this was that

the outer garment must be of a certain length and closed in front. It

was the cut and not the colour of the "cloth" which was at first

considered important. But later regulations restricted the colour to

black, and insisted that this garment must reach to the knees. In the

colleges, however, it was only parti-coloured garments that were

regarded as secular, and the "liveries" mentioned by the founders were

usually clothes of the clerical cut but of uniform colour. The fellows

of Queen's, for instance, were required to wear blood-red. The colour of

the liveries was not usually prescribed by statute, but differences of

colour and ornament still survive at Cambridge as badges of different

colleges.

The masters at first wore the cappa, which was the ordinary out-door

full-dress of the secular clergy. And this "cope," with a border and

hood of minever, came to be the official academical costume. The shape

of the masters' cappa soon became stereotyped and distinctive; then a

cappa with sleeves was adopted as the uniform of bachelors. As to the

hood, it was the material of which it was made--minever--which

distinguished the master, not the hood itself; for a hood was part of

the ordinary clerical attire. Bachelors of all faculties wore hoods of

lamb's-wool or rabbit's-fur, but undergraduates were deprived of the

right of wearing a hood in 1489--nisi liripipium consuetum ... et non

contextum--the little black stuff hood, worn by sophisters in the

schools till within living memory.

The cappa went out of use amongst the Oxford M.A.'s during the sixteenth

century. The regents granted themselves wholesale dispensations from its

use. Stripped of this formal, outer robe, the toga was revealed, the

unofficial cassock or under-garment, which now gradually usurped the

place of the cappa and became the distinctively academical dress of the

Masters of Arts. But it was not at first the dull prosaic robe that we

know. The mediæval master was clad in bright colours, red or green or

blue, and rejoiced in them until the rising flood of prejudice in favour

of all that is dull and sombre and austere washed away these together

with almost all other touches of colour from the landscape of our grey

island.

The distinctive badge of mastership handed to the inceptor by the father

of his faculty, was the biretta, a square cap with a tuft on the top,

from which is descended our cap with its tassel. Doctors of the superior

faculties differentiated themselves by wearing a biretta (square cap) or

pilea (round) as well as cappas, of bright hues, red, purple or violet.

Gascoigne, indeed, in his theological dictionary, declares that this

head-dress was bestowed by God himself on the Doctors of the Mosaic Law.

Whatever its origin, the round velvet cap with coloured silk ribbon,

came to be, and still is, the peculiar property of the Doctors of Law

and Medicine.

The Oxford gowns of the present day have little resemblance to their

mediæval prototypes. For the ordinary undergraduate or "commoner"

to-day, academical dress, which must be worn at lectures, in chapel, in

the streets at night, and on all official occasions, consists of his

cap, a tattered "mortar-board," and a gown which seems a very poor

relation of the original clerical garb. The sleeves have gone, and the

length; only two bands survive, and a little gathering on the shoulders,

and this apology for a gown is worn as often as not round the throat as

a scarf, or carried under the arm.

Some years ago it was a point of honour with every undergraduate to wear

a cap which was as battered and disreputable as possible. Every freshman

seized the first opportunity to break the corners of his "mortar-board"

and to cut and unravel the tassel. Yet once the tufted biretta, when it

was the badge of mastership, was much coveted by undergraduates. First,

they obtained the right of wearing a square cap without a tassel, like

those still worn by the choristers of Oxford colleges, and then they

were granted the use of a tassel. The tuft in the case of the gentlemen

commoners took the form of a golden tassel. Snobs who cultivated the

society of these gilded youths for the sake of their titles or their

cash, or tutors,

"Rough to common men,

But honeying at the whisper of a Lord,"

gained from this fact the nick-name of tuft-hunters.

The commoner, it should be explained, is one who pays for his commons, a

student not on the foundation. The colleges were, in most cases,

intended originally only for the fellows and scholars on the foundation.

The admission of other students as commoners or boarders was a

subsequent development, and various ranks of students came to be

recognised--noblemen, gentlemen commoners, commoners, fellow-commoners,

battelers, or servitors. These grades are now practically obsolete, the

only distinction drawn among the undergraduates being between the

scholars or students on the foundation and commoners, the ordinary

undergraduates, who do not enjoy any scholarship or exhibition.