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 ofoverwhelming 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 wererequired 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 salemust 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.”
“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 salemust 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 theinhabitants 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 instructionin 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-increasingsense 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 beenelected 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.
S. Alban’s Hall Merton CollegeS. 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.”
“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’spoor scholarlodged 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.”...
“A chamber had he in that hostelrie,Alone, withouten any compagnie,Ful fetisly ydight with herbes sote.”...
“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 doneso 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 anatelierin 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 ormake 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 wouldtuckthem, 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.”
“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 ormake 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 wouldtuckthem, 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 ofKing Edward,It was a swapping, swapping mallard.“The Romans once admired a ganderMore 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 ofKing Edward,It was a swapping, swapping mallard.“Then let us drink and dance a galliardIn the remembrance of the mallard,And as the mallard doth in the pool,Let’s dabble, dive and duck in bowle.[27]Hough, etc.”
“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 ofKing Edward,It was a swapping, swapping mallard.“The Romans once admired a ganderMore 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 ofKing Edward,It was a swapping, swapping mallard.“Then let us drink and dance a galliardIn the remembrance of the mallard,And as the mallard doth in the pool,Let’s dabble, dive and duck in bowle.[27]Hough, etc.”
“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 ofKing Edward,It was a swapping, swapping mallard.
“The Romans once admired a ganderMore 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 ofKing Edward,It was a swapping, swapping mallard.
“Then let us drink and dance a galliardIn 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, pinchedand blue, at the feet of his teacher in the schools, and the Masters of Arts,
“When, in forlorn and naked chambers coopedAnd crowded, o’er the ponderous books they hung,”
“When, in forlorn and naked chambers coopedAnd crowded, o’er the ponderous books they hung,”
“When, in forlorn and naked chambers coopedAnd 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 thestudents 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 giveTo a poor scholar.’”
“Often, starting from some covert place,Saluted the chance comer on the road,Crying, ‘An obolus, a penny giveTo a poor scholar.’”
“Often, starting from some covert place,Saluted the chance comer on the road,Crying, ‘An obolus, a penny giveTo 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 andcertified 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,”
“At matins froze and couched at curfew time,”
“At matins froze and couched at curfew time,”
and when
“Lovers of truth, by penury constrainedBucer, Erasmus or Melancthon, readBefore the doors or windows of their cellsBy moonshine, through mere lack of taper light.”
“Lovers of truth, by penury constrainedBucer, Erasmus or Melancthon, readBefore the doors or windows of their cellsBy moonshine, through mere lack of taper light.”
“Lovers of truth, by penury constrainedBucer, Erasmus or Melancthon, readBefore the doors or windows of their cellsBy 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 theyfrequently 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 smaleHis astrelabie, longinge for his art,His augrim-stones layen faire apartOn shelves couched at his beddes heed;His presse y-covered with a falding reed.And al above ther lay a gay sautryeOn which he made a nightes melodyeSo swetely, that all the chambre rong;And Angelus ad virginem he song.”
“His Almageste and bokes grete and smaleHis astrelabie, longinge for his art,His augrim-stones layen faire apartOn shelves couched at his beddes heed;His presse y-covered with a falding reed.And al above ther lay a gay sautryeOn which he made a nightes melodyeSo swetely, that all the chambre rong;And Angelus ad virginem he song.”
“His Almageste and bokes grete and smaleHis astrelabie, longinge for his art,His augrim-stones layen faire apartOn shelves couched at his beddes heed;His presse y-covered with a falding reed.And al above ther lay a gay sautryeOn which he made a nightes melodyeSo 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’sDe remedio amorisand 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 mediævalstudent, 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 thebeginning 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 theplaying 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 moriVinum sit appositum morientis ori,Ut dicant, quum venerint, angelorum chori,‘Deus sit propitius huic potatori.’”
“Mihi est propositum in taberna moriVinum sit appositum morientis ori,Ut dicant, quum venerint, angelorum chori,‘Deus sit propitius huic potatori.’”
“Mihi est propositum in taberna moriVinum 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 werealso 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 undergraduateliable 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 7A.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, thetoga 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 thetassel. 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,