Chapter V: The Mediæval Student (1)

"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

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

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

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.

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.