We have seen how the foundation of Merton, and therefore of Exeter and Oriel, was directly due to the coming of the friars. And it is to their influence that yet another great and once beautiful college, beautiful no longer, but greater now and more famous than ever by virtue of the services in politics and letters of its successful alumni, owes its origin. For it was under the guidance of a Franciscan friar, one Richard de Slikeburne, that the widow of Sir John de Balliol carried out her husband’s intention of placing upon a thoroughly organised footing his house for poor scholars.

He, the Lord of Barnard Castle, father of the illustrious rival of the Bruce, having about the year 1260 “unjustly vexed and enormously damnified” the Church of Tynemouth and the Church of Durham, was compelled by the militant bishop whose hard task it was to keep peace on the Border, to do penance. He knelt, in expiation of his crime, at the door of Durham Abbey, and was there publicly scourged by the bishop. He also undertook to provide a perpetual maintenance for certain poor scholars in the University.

Balliol’s original scheme of benefaction had little in common with the peculiarly English college-system inaugurated by Walter de Merton. It was drawn up on the lines of the earlier foundations of Paris.

For the Hall of Balliol was originally a college for Artists only who lost their places when they took a degree in Arts. Their scholarships meanwhile supplied them only with food and lodging of a moderate quality. But these youthful students, according to the democratic principles on which the halls were carried on, made their own statutes and customs, and it was in accordance with this code that the Principal was required to govern them.

Balliol’s scholars were established in Oxford by June 1266, and were at first supported by an annual allowance from him. He granted them a commons of eightpence a week. The hostel in which he lodged them was a house he hired in Horsemonger Street (Broad Street), facing the moat and city wall. But before he had made any provision for the permanent endowment of his scholars Balliol died. A close connection had apparently from the first been established between the hall and the Franciscans. One of the agents by whom Balliol’s dole had been distributed was a Franciscan friar. Now, under the guidance and probably at the instigation of the friar Richard of Slikeburne, whom she appointed her attorney in the business, Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway, the widow of John of Balliol, set herself to secure the welfare of her husband’s scholars. Since his death the very existence of the newly formed society had been in jeopardy. The Lady Dervorguilla, then, addressed a letter to the procurators or agents of Balliol’s dole, instructing them to put in force a code of statutes which was no doubt in great part merely a formal statement of customs already established at the Old Balliol Hall. She next fitted up the north aisle of the parish church (S. Mary Magdalen) for the use of her scholars; she endowed them with lands in Northumberland, and purchased for their dwelling-place three tenements east of Old Balliol Hall. These tenements, which were south-west of the present front quadrangle, and faced the street, were soon known as New Balliol Hall or Mary Hall. The whole of the site of the front quadrangle was acquired by the Society as early as 1310.

A few years later (1327) the scholars built themselves a chapel, part of which, said to be preserved in the dining-room of the Master’s House, forms an interesting link between the original scholars of Balliol and the modern Society which is connected with the name of Dr Jowett. The statutes, which had been much tinkered by subsequent benefactors and bishops, were finally revised by Bishop Fox, the enlightened and broad-minded founder of C.C.C.

Fox gave Balliol a constitution, not altogether in harmony with his own ideals as expressed in the statutes of Corpus, but such as he thought best fitted to fulfil the intentions of the founders. He divided the Society into two halves:—ten juniors, Scholastici, and ten Fellows, Socii, each of whom had a definite duty. In their hands the whole government of the College was placed.

According to the new regulations the scholars or servitors of Balliol were to occupy a position humbler than that of the younger students at any other College. They were to wait upon the Master and the graduate Fellows and to be fed with the crumbs that should fall from the table of their superiors. They were to be nominated by the Fellow whom they were to serve, to be from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, and if they proved themselves industrious and well-behaved they were to be eligible to Fellowships even though they had not taken the degree of B.A. Commoners, as in most other Colleges, were to be allowed to lodge within the walls of the College, and to take their meals with the members of the Society.

The Fellowships, which entitled the holder to a “commons” of 1s. 8d. a week, were thrown open to competition, candidates being required, however, to be Bachelors of Arts, of legitimate birth, good character, proficient in their studies, and in need of assistance, for any cure of souls, or a private income of more than 40s. a year, was accounted a reason for disqualification.

Fox had a weakness for metaphors. In the statutes of Corpus he “spoke horticulturally; his metaphor was drawn from bees.” On the present occasion he uses a metaphor as elaborate and appropriate. The College is described as a human body. The Master was the head, endued with the five senses of seeing clearly, hearing discreetly, smelling sagaciously, tasting moderately, and touching fitly; the senior Fellow was the neck; the Deans were the shoulders; the two priests the sides; the Bursars the arms and hands; the Fellows the stomach; the scholars the legs; and the servants the feet, whose function it is to go whithersoever they are bidden. Just as the body when sick would require a physician, so it was said would the College sometimes require a visitor. The Master and Fellows were given the unusual privilege of choosing their own visitor.

In the fifteenth century the whole quadrangle was rebuilt; the Old Hall, the Old Library, the Master’s House, and the block of buildings and gateway facing Broad Street being then erected. Of these the shell of the Master’s House, the Old Hall, now converted into an undergraduates’ library, and the Old Library, much defaced by Wyatt, survive. The east wall of the library was used to form the west end of the chapel, which was built in 1529 to replace the old oratory. The sixteenth century chapel was removed and the present building erected as a memorial to Dr Jenkins, under whom Balliol had begun to develop into a College of almost national importance. Mr Butterfield, the architect who had done his best to ruin Merton, and who perpetrated Keble, was entrusted with this unfortunate method of perpetuating the worthy Master’s memory.

Balliol College
Balliol College

Mr Waterhouse is responsible for the present front of the College, the east side of the first quadrangle, the north side of the Garden Quadrangle and the new Hall therein (1867-1877).

Not content with fighting the University, the Oxford Friars soon began to fight each other. Rivalries sprang up between the Orders; enormous scandals of discord, as Matthew Paris phrases it. Jealousy found its natural vent in politics as in the schools. Politically, the Oxford Franciscans supported Simon de Montfort; the Dominicans sided with the King. The Mad Parliament met in the Convent of the Black Friars. In philosophy the Franciscans attacked the doctrine of the Dominican, S. Thomas Aquinas, who had made an elaborate attempt to show that natural and revealed truth were complementary the one of the other. In order to establish this thesis and to reconcile human philosophy and the Christian faith, the Angelic Doctor, for so he was commonly termed, had written an encyclopædia of philosophy and theology, in which he advanced arguments on both sides of every question and decided judicially on each in strict accordance with the tenets of the Church.

The light of this “sparkling jewel of the clergy, this very clear mirror of the University of Paris, this noble and illuminating candlestick,” was somewhat dimmed, however, when the great Franciscan hero, the “subtle doctor,” Duns Scotus, took up the argument, and clearly proved that the reasoning of this champion of orthodoxy was itself unorthodox. The world of letters was divided for generations into the rival camps of Scotists and Thomists. But the two doctors have fared very differently at the hands of posterity. Thomas was made a Saint, judged to be a “candlestick,” and awarded by Dante a place high in the realms of Paradise. Duns Scotus, on the other hand, whose learning and industry were as great and his merit probably not much inferior, survives chiefly in the English language as a “dunce.” The name of the great Oxford scholar stands to the world chiefly as a synonym for a fool and a blockhead. For when the Humanists, and afterwards the Reformers, attacked his system as a farrago of needless entities and useless distinctions, the Duns men, or Dunses, on their side railed against the new learning. The name of Dunce, therefore, already synonymous with cavilling sophist or hair-splitter, soon passed into the sense of dull, obstinate person, impervious to the new learning, and of blockhead, incapable of learning or scholarship. Such is the justice of history.

Duns Scotus had carried the day and the Church rallied to the side of the Franciscans. But such a successful attack involved the Orders in extreme bitterness. The Dominicans retorted that these Franciscans, who claimed and received such credit throughout Europe for humility and Christlike poverty, were really accumulating wealth by alms or bequests. The charge was true enough.

The pride and luxury of the Friars, their splendid buildings, their laxity in the Confessional, their artifices for securing proselytes, their continual strife with the University and their endeavours to obtain peculiar privileges therein had long undermined their popularity. They were regarded as “locusts” who had settled on the land and stripped the trees of learning and of life.

Duns Scotus held almost undisputed sway for a while. His works on logic, theology and philosophy were text-books in the University. But presently there arose a new light, a pupil of his own, to supplant him.

William of Ockham, the “singular” or “invincible” doctor, revived the doctrine of Nominalism. At once the glory and reproach of his Order, he used the weapons of Scholasticism to destroy it.

But if in Philosophy the “invincible doctor” was a sceptic, in Theology he was a fanatical supporter of the extreme Franciscan view that the ministers of Christ were bound to follow the example of their Master, and to impose upon themselves absolute poverty. It was a view which found no favour with popes or councils. But undeterred by the thunders of the Church, Ockham did not shrink from thus attacking the foundations of the papal supremacy or from asserting the rights of the civil power.

Paris had been, as we have seen, the first home of Scholasticism, but with the beginning of the fourteenth century, Oxford had taken its place as the centre of intellectual activity in Europe. The most important schoolmen of the age were all Oxonians, and nearly all the later schoolmen of note were Englishmen or Germans educated in the traditions of the English “nation” at Paris.

And when the old battle between Nominalism and Realism was renewed, it was fought with more unphilosophical virulence than before. “It was at this time that Philosophy literally descended from the schools into the street, and that the odium metaphysicum gave fresh zest to the unending faction fight between north and south at Oxford, between Czech and German at Prague” (Rashdall).

Yet this was not without good results. For Scholasticism began now to come in contact with practical life. The disputants were led on to deal with the burning questions of the day, the questions, that is, as to the foundations of property, the respective rights of king and pope, of king and subject, of priest and people.

The day was now at hand when the trend of political events, stimulated by the influence of the daring philosophical speculations of the Oxford schoolmen, was to issue in a crisis. The crisis was a conflict between the claims of papal supremacy and the rights of the civil power, and for this crisis Oxford produced the man—John Wycliffe.

Born on the banks of the Tees, he, the last of the great schoolmen, was educated at Balliol, where he probably resided till he was elected master of that College in 1356. In 1361 he accepted a College living and left Oxford for a while, but was back again in 1363, and resided in Queen’s College. He combined his residence there and his studies for a degree in theology with the holding of a living at Ludgershall in Bucks. Some suppose that he was then appointed Warden of Canterbury Hall,[19] but this supposition is probably incorrect. At any rate he was already a person of importance, not only at Oxford, but at the Court.

When Parliament decided to repudiate the annual tribute to the Pope which John had undertaken to pay, Wycliffe officially defended this repudiation. He continued to study at Oxford, developing his views. That he was in high favour at Court is shown by the fact that he was nominated (1374) by the Crown to the Rectory of Lutterworth and appointed one of the Royal Commissioners to confer with the papal representatives at Bruges. But he continued lecturing at Oxford and preaching in London.

Politically he threw in his lot with the Lancastrian party. For he had been led in the footsteps of his Italian and English predecessors, Marsiglio and Ockham, to proclaim that the Church suffered by being involved in secular affairs, and that endowments were a hindrance to the proper spiritual purpose of the Church. So it came about that the “Flower of Oxford,” as he was called, the priest who desired to reform the clergy, found himself in alliance with John of Gaunt, the worldly statesman, who merely desired to rob them. He soon found himself in need of the Duke’s protection. The wealthy and worldly churchmen of the day were not likely to listen tamely to his lectures. He was summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to answer charges of erroneous teaching concerning the wealth of the Church (1377). The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as given to himself. He stood by Wycliffe in the Consistory Court at S. Paul’s, and a rude brawl between his supporters and those of Courtenay, in which the Duke himself is said to have threatened to drag the Bishop out of the church by the hair of his head, put an end to the trial. Papal bulls were now promulgated against Wycliffe. The University was directed to condemn and arrest him, if he were found guilty of maintaining certain “conclusions” extracted from his writings. The Oxford masters, however, were annoyed at the attack made upon a distinguished member of their body, and they resented, as a threatened infringement of their privileges, the order of the Archbishop and Bishop of London, which commanded the Oxford divines to hold an enquiry and to send Wycliffe to London to be heard in person. What they did, therefore, was simply to enjoin Wycliffe to remain within the walls of Black Hall, whilst they, after considering his opinions, declared them orthodox, but liable to misinterpretation. But Wycliffe could not disobey the Archbishop’s summons to appear at Lambeth. There he proved the value of a Schoolman’s training. The subtlety of “the most learned clerk of his time” reduced his opponents to silence.

The prelates were at a loss how to proceed. They were relieved from their dilemma by the arrival of a Knight from the Court, who brought a peremptory message from the Princess of Wales, mother of Richard II., forbidding them to issue any decree against Wycliffe.

The session was dissolved by an invasion of the London crowd. Wycliffe escaped scot-free. Then followed the scandal of the Great Schism, when two, or even three, candidates each claimed to be the one and only Vicar of Christ.

It is the Great Schism which would appear to have converted Wycliffe into a declared opponent of the papacy. Pondering on the problems of Church and State which had hitherto occupied his energies, he was now forced to the conclusion that the papal, and therefore the sacerdotal power in general must be assailed. It was a logical deduction from his central thesis, the doctrine of “dominion founded on grace.” He organised a band of preachers who should instruct the laity in the mother tongue and supply them with a Bible translated into English. Thus under his auspices Oxford became the centre of a widespread religious movement. There the poor or simple priests, as they were called, had a common abode, whence, barefooted and clad in russet or grey gowns which reached to their ankles, they went forth to propagate his doctrines. And since the Friars, who owed their independence of the bishops and clergy to the privilege conferred upon them by the popes, were strong supporters of the papal autocracy, Wycliffe attacked them, by his own eloquence and that of his preachers, and that at a time when their luxurious and degenerate lives laid them open to popular resentment.

Already (1356) Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who like Wycliffe had been a scholar of Balliol and in 1333 had held the office of Vice-Chancellor, had attacked the Friars for their encroachments upon the domain of the parish priests; their power, their wealth, their mendicancy, he maintained, were all contrary to the example and precepts of Christ and therefore of their founder. He charged them also with encroaching upon the rights of parents by making use of the confessional to induce children to enter their convents and become Friars. This was the reason, he asserted, why the University had fallen to one-fifth of its former numbers, for parents were unwilling to send their sons thither and preferred to bring them up as farmers.

This attack furnished Wycliffe with a model for his onslaught. In his earlier days he had treated the Friars with respect and even as allies—“a Franciscan” he had said, “is very near to God”—for then he had been attacking the endowments of the Church, and it was the monks or “possessioners” and the rich secular clergy to whom he was opposed. In theory the Mendicant Orders were opposed to these by their poverty and in practice by their interests.

But the Friars were the close allies and chief defenders of the Pope. Now, therefore, when Wycliffe passed from political to doctrinal reform, his attitude towards the Mendicant Orders becomes one of uncompromising hostility.

He and his followers denounced them with all the vehemence of religious partisanship and all the vigour of the vernacular. Iscariot’s children, they called them, and irregular Procurators of the Fiend, adversaries of Christ and Disciples of Satan.

Wycliffe indeed went so far as to attribute an outbreak of disease in Oxford to the idleness and intellectual stagnation of the Friars.

Finally, Wycliffe aimed at undermining the power of the priesthood by challenging the doctrine of Transubstantiation. According to this doctrine the priest had the power of working a daily miracle by “making the body of Christ.” Wycliffe, in the summer of 1381, first publicly denied that the elements of the sacrament underwent any material change by virtue of the words uttered by the priest. The real presence of the body and blood of Christ he maintained, but that there was any change of substance he denied.

The heresy was promulgated at Oxford. An enquiry was immediately held by the Chancellor (William Berton) and twelve doctors, half of them Friars, and the new “pestiferous” doctrines were condemned. The condemnation and injunction forbidding any man in future to teach or defend them in the University was announced to Wycliffe as he was sitting in the Augustinian Schools, disputing the subject. He was taken aback, but at once challenged chancellor or doctor to disprove his conclusions. The “pertinacious heretic,” in fact, continued to maintain his thesis, and made a direct appeal, not to the Pope, but to the King. The University rallied to his side and tacitly supported his cause by replacing Berton with Robert Rygge in the office of Vice-Chancellor. Rygge was more than a little inclined to be a Wycliffite. And Wycliffe meanwhile appealed also to the people by means of those innumerable tracts in the English tongue, which make the last of the schoolmen the first of the English pamphleteers. Whilst he was thus entering on his most serious encounter with the Church, suddenly there broke out the Peasant Revolt. The insurrection blazed forth suddenly, furiously, simultaneously and died away, having spent its force in a fortnight. It was a sporadic revolt with no unity of purpose or action except to express the general social discontent. But the upper classes were seriously frightened and some of the odium was reflected on the subversive doctrines of Wycliffe, whose Lollard preachers had doubtless dabbled not a little in the socialism which honey-combed the Middle Ages.

When order was again restored, Courtenay, now become Archbishop, began to take active measures to repress the opinions of Wycliffe. He summoned a synod at the Blackfriars in London to examine them. The first session was interrupted by an earthquake, which was differently interpreted as a sign of the divine approval or anger. The Earthquake Council had no choice but to condemn such doctrines as those they were asked to consider, that God ought to obey the devil, for instance, or that no one ought to be recognised as Pope after Urban VI.

When these doctrines were condemned, Wycliffe does not appear to have been present, nor was any action at all taken against him personally. It is supposed that his popularity at Oxford rendered him too formidable a person to attack. He was left at peace and the storm fell upon his disciples. The attack was made on “certain children of perdition,” who had publicly taught the condemned doctrines, and “who went about the country preaching to the people, without proper authority.” All such preachers were to be visited with the greater excommunication.

As Oxford, however, was the centre of the movement a separate mandate was sent thither.

The Archbishop sent down a commissary, Peter Stokes, a Carmelite friar, to Oxford, to prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoiding any mention of the teacher’s name. The University authorities were by no means pleased at this invasion, so they held it, of their ancient privileges. The Chancellor Rygge had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a devoted follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University; he now appointed a no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon to the same office. His sermon was an outspoken defence of the Lollards. Stokes reported that he dared not publish the Archbishop’s mandate, that he went about in the fear of his life; for scholars with arms concealed beneath their gowns accompanied the preachers and it appeared that not the Chancellor only, but both the Proctors were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to support the Wycliffites to abating one jot of what they considered the privileges of the University. And for once the Mayor was of the same opinion as the rulers of the University. Still, when the Chancellor was summoned before the Archbishop in London, he did not venture to disobey, and promptly cleared himself of any suspicion of heresy. The council met again at the Blackfriars, and Rygge submissively took his seat in it. On his bended knees he apologised for his disobedience to the Archbishop’s orders, and only obtained pardon through the influence of William of Wykeham. Short work was made of the Oxford Wycliffites; they were generally, and four of them by name, suspended from all academical functions. Rygge returned to Oxford, with a letter from Courtenay which repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, adding to their names the name of Wycliffe himself. The latter was likened by the Archbishop to a serpent which emits noxious poison. But the Chancellor protested he dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be issued to compel him. Meanwhile he showed his real feeling in the matter by suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them by the offensive name of Lollards (“idle babblers”). But the council in London went on to overpower the party by stronger measures.[20] Wycliffe had apparently retired before the storm burst upon Oxford. John of Gaunt was appealed to by the preachers named. But the great Duke of Lancaster had no desire to incur the charge of encouraging heresy. He pronounced the opinions of Hereford and Repyngdon on the nature of the eucharist utterly detestable. The last hope of Lollardism was gone. Wycliffe himself retired unmolested to Lutterworth, where he died and was buried. “Admirable,” says Fuller “that a hare so often hunted with so many packs of dogs should die at last quietly sitting in his form.” Just as he owed his influence as a Reformer to the skill and fame as a schoolman which he had acquired at Oxford, so now his immunity was due to his reputation as the greatest scholastic doctor in the “second school of the Church.”

The statute “De haeretico Comburendo” did its work quickly in stamping out Lollardy in the country. The tares were weeded out. In Oxford alone the tradition of Wycliffe died hard. A remarkable testimonial was issued in October 1406 by the Chancellor and Masters, sealed with the University seal. Some have thought it a forgery, and at the best it probably only represented, as Maxwell Lyte suggests, the verdict of a minority of the Masters snatched in the Long Vacation. But it is in any case of considerable significance. It extols the character of John Wycliffe, and his exemplary performances as a son of the University; it extols his truly Catholic zeal against all who blasphemed Christ’s religion by voluntary begging, and asserts that he was neither convicted of heretical pravity during his life, nor exhumed and burned after death. He had no equal, it maintains, in the University as a writer on logic, philosophy, theology or ethics.

Here then, Archbishop Arundel (1407) an Oriel man, who with his father had built for that College her first chapel, found it necessary to take strong steps. He held a provincial council at Oxford and ordered that all books written in Wycliffe’s time should pass through the censorship, first of the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and secondly of the Archbishop himself, before they might be used in the schools. The establishment of such a censorship was equivalent to a fatal muzzling of genius. If it silenced the Wycliffite teaching, it silenced also the enunciation of any original opinion or truth. Two years later Arundel risked a serious quarrel with the University in order to secure the appointment of a committee to make a list of heresies and errors to be found in Wycliffe’s writings. He announced his intention of holding a visitation of the University with that object. He met with violent opposition. The opponents of the Archbishop were not all enthusiastic supporters of Wycliffe’s views. Not all masters and scholars were moved by pure zeal either for freedom of speculation or for evangelical truth. The local patriotism of the north countryman reinforced the religious zeal of the Lollard. The chronic antipathy of the secular scholars to the friars, of the realists to the nominalists, of the artists to the higher faculties, and the academic pride of the loyal Oxonians—these were all motives which fought for Wycliffe and his doctrines. Least tangible but not least powerful among them was the last, for when civil or ecclesiastical authority endeavoured to assert itself over corporate privileges in the Middle Ages, a very hornet’s nest of local patriotism and personal resentment was quickly roused.

The Oxford masters were impatient of all interference ecclesiastical as well as civil. They had thrown off the yoke of the Bishop of Lincoln and the Archdeacon of Oxford. And, with a view to asserting their independence of the Primate, they had succeeded in obtaining a bull from Boniface IX. in which he specifically confirmed the sole jurisdiction of the Chancellor over all members of the University whatever, Priests and Monks and Friars included. The University, however, was compelled to renounce the bull, and to submit to the visitation of the Archbishop. But the submission was not made without much disturbance and bitterness of feeling. The Lollards, the younger scholars and the northerners, with their lawless allies the Irish, were in favour of active resistance.

The behaviour of three Fellows of Oriel will show how the University was divided against itself. These men, so runs the complaint against them, “are notorious fomenters of discord.”

The arrival of the Archbishop at Oxford then, to hold a visitation at S. Mary’s was a signal for an outbreak. S. Mary’s was barricaded and a band of scholars armed with bows, swords and bucklers awaited the Primate. Notwithstanding the interdict laid on the Church, John Birch of Oriel, one of the Proctors, took the keys, opened the doors, had the bell rung as usual, and even celebrated High Mass there. S. Mary’s, it will be remembered, belonged to Oriel. Hence, perhaps, the active resistance of these Oriel Fellows and of the Dean of Oriel, John Rote, who asked “why should we be punished by an interdict on our church for other people’s faults?” And he elegantly added, “The Devil go with the Archbishop and break his neck.” The controversy was at last referred to the king. The Chancellors and Proctors resigned their office. The younger students who had opposed the Archbishop were soundly whipped, much to the delight of Henry IV. The bull of exemption was declared invalid; the University acknowledged itself subject to the See of Canterbury, thanks to the mediation of the Prince of Wales, mad-cap Harry, and the Archbishop Arundel made a handsome present of books to the public library of Oxford.

The committee desired by Arundel was eventually constituted. Two hundred and sixty-seven propositions were condemned and the obnoxious books solemnly burnt at Carfax. Not long after, a copy of the list of condemned articles was ordered to be preserved in the public libraries, and oaths against their maintenance were enjoined upon all members of the University on graduation.

The methods of the Archbishop met with the success which usually attends a well-conducted persecution. History notices the few martyrs who from time to time have laid down their lives for their principles, but it often fails to notice the millions of men who have discarded their principles rather than lay down their lives.

So the Wycliffite heresy was at length dead and buried. But the ecclesiastical repression which succeeded in bringing this about succeeded also in destroying all vigour and life in the thought of the University. Henceforth the Schoolmen refrained from touching on the practical questions of their day. They struck out no new paths of thought, but revolved on curves of subtle and profitless speculation, reproducing and exaggerating in their logical hair-splitting all the faults without any of the intellectual virtues of the great thinkers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was against these degenerate dullards that the human mind at last rebelled, when intellect was born again in the New Birth of letters. What wonder then if, suddenly freed from the dead weight of their demoralising stupidities, men broke out in the exuberance of their spirits into childish excesses, confused the master with his foolish and depressing pupils, strewed the quadrangle of New College with the leaves of Dunce, and put them to the least noble of uses, as though they had been the Chronicles of Volusius.

The Archbishop’s right of Visitation was confirmed in Parliament and with it the suppression of Lollardy, of free speech and thought, in the schools and pulpits of Oxford.

The issue of the struggle practically closes the history of Lollardism as a recognised force in English politics, and with it the intellectual history of mediæval Oxford.

Up to that time the University had shown itself decidedly eager for reform, and for a few years the same spirit survived. Oxford had consistently advocated the summoning of a General Council to settle the claims of the rival popes and to put an end to the schism which was the scandal of Christendom. But for fifteen years such pacific designs were eluded by the arts of the ambitious pontiffs, and the scruples or passions of their adherents. At length the Council of Pisa deposed, with equal justice, the Popes of Rome and Avignon. In their stead, as they intended, but in addition to them as events were to prove, the conclave, at which the representatives of Oxford and Cambridge were present, unanimously elected Peter Philargi. This Franciscan friar from Crete, who had taken his degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford, assumed the title of Alexander V., and remains the only wearer of the tiara who has graduated at Oxford or Cambridge. He was shortly afterwards succeeded by John XXIII., the most profligate of mankind. It remained for the Council of Constance to correct the rash proceedings of Pisa, and to substitute one head of the Church in place of the three rival popes (1414).

But before the opening of this Council the University of Oxford had drawn up and presented to the King a document of a very remarkable character. It consisted of forty-six articles for the reformation of the Church. The Oxford masters suggested that the three rival popes should all resign their claims; they complained of the simoniacal and extortionate proceedings of the Roman Court, and of the appointment of foreigners to benefices in England; they accused the Archbishops of encroaching on the rights of their suffragans, and charged the whole Order of prelates with nepotism and avarice. Abbots, they contended, should not be allowed to wear mitres and sandals as if they were bishops, and monks should hot be exempt from ordinary episcopal jurisdiction. Friars should be restrained from granting absolution on easy terms, from stealing children, and from begging for alms in the house of God. Secular canons should be made to abandon their luxurious style of living, and masters of hospitals to pay more regard to the wants of the poor. Parish priests, who neglected the flocks committed to their care, are described as ravening wolves. The Masters also complained of the non-observance of the Sabbath and of the iniquitous system of Indulgences.

Shades of the founder of Lincoln College, what a document is this! It is Wycliffism alive, rampant and unashamed. Not perhaps altogether unashamed or at least not indiscreet, for the Masters go out of their way to call for active measures against the Lollards. But the whole of this manifesto is a cry from Oxford, in 1414, for reformation; it is a direct echo of the teaching and declamation of Wycliffe, and an appeal for reformation as deliberate and less veiled than “the vision of William Langland concerning Piers Plowman,” that sad, serious satirist of those times, who, in his contemplation of the corruption he saw around him in the nobility, the Government, the Church and the Friars, “all the wealth of the world and the woe too,” saw no hope at all save in a new order of things.

Oxford’s zeal for reformation at this time was made very clear also by her representatives at Constance, where a former Chancellor, Robert Halam, Bishop of Salisbury, and Henry Abingdon, a future Warden of Merton, very greatly distinguished themselves. Yet it was by a decree of this very Council of Constance (1415) that the remains of Wycliffe were ordered to be taken up and cast out far from those of any orthodox Christian. This order was not executed till twelve years later, when Bishop Fleming, having received direct instructions from the Pope, saw to it.

Wycliffe’s remains were dug up, burnt and cast into the Swift, but, as it has been said, the Swift bore them to the Avon, the Avon to the Severn, and the Severn to the sea to be dispersed unto all lands: which things are an allegory. For though in England the repression of his teaching deferred the reformation, which theologically as well as politically Wycliffe had begun, for more than a hundred years, yet abroad, in Bohemia, the movement which he had commenced grew into a genuine national force, destined to react upon the world.

Bishop Fleming, who had been proctor in 1407, seems to have thought that the snake was scotched but not killed. For though he had been a sympathiser with the Lollards in his youth, in his old age he thought it worth while to found a “little college of theologians,” who should defend the mysteries of the sacred page “against these ignorant laics, who profaned with swinish snout its most holy pearls.” The students in this stronghold of orthodox divinity were to proceed to the degree of B.D. within a stated period; they must swear not to favour the pestilent sect of Wycliffites, and if they persisted in heresy were to be cast out of the College “as diseased sheep.” It was in 1427 that Fleming obtained a charter permitting him to unite the three parish churches of All Saints’, S. Michael’s, and S. Mildred’s into a collegiate church, and there to establish a “collegiolum,” consisting of a rector and seven students of Theology, endowed with the revenue of those churches. No sooner had he appointed the first rector, purchased a site and begun to erect the buildings just south of the tower, than he died. The energy of the second rector, however, Dr John Beke, secured the firmer foundation of the College. He completed the purchase of the original site, which is represented by the front quadrangle and about half the grove; and thereon John Forest, Dean of Wells, completed (1437) the buildings as Fleming had planned them, including a chapel and library, hall and kitchen, and rooms. Modern Lincoln is bounded by Brasenose College and Brasenose Lane, the High Street and the Turl,[21] the additional property between All Saints’ Church and the front quadrangle having been bestowed upon the College during the period 1435-1700. Of Forest’s buildings the kitchen alone remains untouched, and a very charming fragment of the old structure it is.

The foundation of Lincoln was remodelled and developed by Thomas Rotherham, Chancellor of Cambridge, and afterwards Archbishop of York. His benefactions to the cause of learning were munificent and unceasing, and, so far as Lincoln is concerned, he may fairly be called the College’s second founder. The origin of his interest in the College arose from a picturesque incident. When he visited the College as bishop of the diocese in 1474, the rector, John Tristrope, urged its claims in the course of a sermon. He took for his text the words from the psalm, “Behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted,” and he earnestly exhorted the bishop to complete the work begun by his predecessor. For the College was poor, and what property it had was at this time threatened. So powerful and convincing was his appeal that, at the end of the sermon, the bishop stood up and announced that he would grant the request. He was as good as his word. He gave the College a new charter and new statutes (1480)—a code which served it till the Commission of 1854; he increased its revenues and completed the quadrangle on the south side. There is a vine which still grows in Lincoln, on the north side of the chapel quadrangle, and this is the successor of a vine which was either planted alongside the hall in allusion to the successful text, or, being already there, suggested it.

CHAPTER V

THE MEDIÆVAL STUDENT

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

The Porch & Gate S. Mary the Virgins.
The Porch & Gate S. Mary the Virgins.

of the city’s life and represents the spirit of municipal liberty which animated her citizens, and the progress of their municipal freedom.

The bell which swung in Carfax Tower summoned the common assembly to discuss and to decide their own public affairs and to elect their own mayor. And this town-mote of burghers, freemen within the walls, who held their rights as burghers by virtue of their tenure of ground on which their tenement stood, met in Carfax Churchyard. Justice was administered by mayor and bailiff sitting beneath the low shed, the “penniless bench”[22] of later times, without its eastern wall. And around the church lay the trade guilds, ranged as in some vast encampment.

Carfax Church, with all its significance of municipal life, stands at the top of High Street, the most beautiful street in the world. Still, by virtue of the splendid sweep of its curve comparable only to the Grand Canal of Venice or the bend of Windermere, and by virtue of the noble grouping of its varied buildings, the most beautiful street in the world; in spite of modern tramways and the ludicrous dome of the Shelley Memorial, “a thing resembling a goose pye,” as Swift wrote of Sir John Vanburgh’s house in Whitehall; in spite of the disquieting ornamentation of Brasenose new buildings and the new schools; in spite even of the unspeakably vulgar and pretentious façade of Lloyd’s Bank, a gross, advertising abomination of unexampled ugliness and impertinence, which has done all that was possible to ruin the first view of this street of streets. Let us leave it behind us with a shudder and pass down the High till we find on our left, at what was once the end of “Schools Street,” the lovely twisted columns of the porch which forms the modern entrance to S. Mary’s Church.

What Carfax was to the municipal life of Oxford, S. Mary’s was to the University. It was the centre of the academical and ecclesiastical life of the place. And the bell which swung in S. Mary’s tower summoned the students of the University sometimes to take part in learned disputations among themselves, sometimes to fight the citizens of the town.

Here then, between the Churches of S. Martin and S. Mary, the life of this mediæval University town ebbed and flowed. In the narrow, ill-paved, dirty streets, streets that were mere winding passages, from which the light of day was almost excluded by the overhanging tops of the irregular houses, crowded a motley throng. The country folks filled the centre of the streets with their carts and strings of pack-horses; at the sides, standing beneath the signs of their calling, which projected from their houses, citizens in varied garb plied their trades, chaffering with the manciples, but always keeping their bow-strings taut, ready to promote a riot by pelting a scholar with offal from the butchers’ stall, and prompt to draw their knives at a moment’s notice. To and fro among the stalls moved Jews in their yellow gaberdines; black Benedictines and white Cistercians; Friars black, white and grey; men-at-arms from the Castle, and flocks of lads who had entered some grammar school or religious house to pass the first stage of the University course. Here passed a group of ragged, gaunt, yellow-visaged sophisters, returning peacefully from lectures to their inns, but with their “bastards” or daggers, as well as their leather pouches, at their waists. Here a knot of students, fantastically attired in many-coloured garments, whose tonsure was the only sign of their clerkly character, wearing beards, long hair, furred cloaks, and shoes chequered with red and green, paraded the thoroughfare, heated with wine from the feast of some determining bachelor. Here a line of servants, carrying the books of scholars or doctors to the schools, or there a procession of colleagues escorting to the grave the body of some master, and bearing before the corpse a silver cross, threaded the throng. Here hurried a bachelor in his cape, a new master in

The High Street On the left University College. On the right All Saints’ Church, Brasenose College, Church of S. Mary the Virgin, All Souls’ & Queen’s Colleges.
The High Street
On the left University College. On the right All Saints’ Church, Brasenose College, Church of S. Mary the Virgin, All Souls’ & Queen’s Colleges.

his “pynsons” or heelless shoes, a scholar of Exeter in his black boots, a full-fledged master with his tunic closely fastened about the middle by a belt and wearing round his shoulders a black, sleeveless, close gown. Here gleamed a mantle of crimson cloth, or the budge-edged hood of a doctor of law or of theology. And in the hubbub of voices which proceeded from this miscellaneous, parti-coloured mob, might be distinguished every accent, every language, and every dialect.[23] For French, German and Spanish students jostled in these streets against English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh; Kentish students mingled with students from Somersetshire or Yorkshire, and the speech of each was quite unintelligible to the other.

S. Mary’s Church was the only formal meeting place of these students, thus drawn together in the pursuit of knowledge from various parts of Europe. It was here that all University business, secular and religious, was transacted, till the building of the Divinity school and the Sheldonian theatre allowed the church to be reserved for sacred purposes. Then at last it ceased to be the scene of violent altercations between Heads of Houses or the stage where the Terræ Filius of the year should utter his scurrilous banalities.[24]

But still every Sunday morning during term the great bell of S. Mary’s rings out and summons the University to assemble in formal session there to hear a sermon. The bedels of the four faculties with their silver staves lead the way; and the Vice-chancellor is conducted to his throne, the preacher to his pulpit; the doctors of the several faculties in their rich robes follow and range themselves on either side of their official head; below them the proctors, representatives of the Masters of Arts, wearing the white hoods of their office, take their seats. The masters and bachelors fill the body of the church, the undergraduates are crowded into the galleries.

We must not think of S. Mary’s as merely a meeting-house for University business or as merely a parish church. For centuries it has been the centre of Christian Oxford; where each successive movement in English theology has been expounded and discussed. From the old stone pulpit, of which a fragment is fixed over the southern archway of the tower, Peter Martyr delivered his testimony and Cole sent Cranmer to the stake; from its nineteenth century successor, John Keble began the Oxford movement; Dr Pusey preached a sermon for which he was suspended, and Newman (vicar 1831) entered on the path to Rome.

The church is mentioned in Domesday Book, and the north wall of the Lady Chapel, commonly known as Adam de Brome’s Chapel because the tomb of the founder of Oriel is therein, may have been part of the church as it stood at the time of the Domesday survey. The tower and the spire date from the early fourteenth century.

S. Mary’s as we have it now is very much a Tudor building. When William of Wykeham built New College Chapel he set a fashion which soon converted Oxford into a city of pinnacles.[25] In the perpendicular style pinnacles were erected on Merton tower and transept, on All Souls’ Chapel, on Magdalen Chapel, hall and tower; nearly a hundred pinnacles decorated the Schools and Library; the nave, aisles and chancel of S. Mary’s received the same ornaments, and pinnacles in the same style were added to the clusters of the fourteenth century tower and spire. These were not high but observed a true proportion.

It was the grave fault of the excessively lofty pinnacles (beautiful no doubt in themselves) which were added in 1848,[26] that they destroyed the true beauty of proportion and the effect of gradual transition which the fourteenth century builders had succeeded in giving to the tower and spire, and with which the ancient statues in

S. Mary’s Spire from Grove Lane
S. Mary’s Spire from Grove Lane

their canopied niches were in perfect harmony. For the massive tower-buttresses are crowned with turrets, showing canopied niches containing twelve over-life-size statues and decorated with ball-flower ornament. Two of the statues on the buttresses facing south are modern; nine others are copies (1895) of the old statues, stored now in the ancient Congregation House, which still exhibit the carefully calculated gestures and the studied designs of the original fourteenth century workers. They form a series which recalls that on the west front of Wells Cathedral, a rare example of English sculpture in a genre which is so plentifully and superbly illustrated by the French cathedrals.

On the face of the south buttress of the west front stood the statue, beautifully posed, of the Virgin with the Infant Christ, the Lady of the Church thus occupying the most important angle of the tower; on the left, S. John the Evangelist with the cup. Between the Evangelist and S. John the Baptist, patron saint of the Chapel of Merton, Walter of Merton looks out towards the College he founded. These three are from new designs by Mr Frampton.

On the N.W. angle of the tower is S. Cuthbert of Durham, facing northwards. He holds in his hand the head of S. Oswald, the Christian King slain by Penda, and looks towards his own north country and Durham, the great diocese so intimately connected through its bishops and monastery with the early collegiate foundations of the Universities. Northwards, too, towards his cathedral church of Lincoln, faces S. Hugh, with the wild swan of Stowe nestling to him as was his wont, with its neck buried in the folds of his sleeve. This statue is on the eastern buttress at the N.E. angle, and on the eastern face of the same buttress is an equally noble statue of Edward the Confessor. On the S.E. angle stands, it may be, the murdered Becket, and among the other figures Edmund Rich may perhaps be counted.

The chancel and nave are, it will be seen, splendid examples of late perpendicular. The chancel, in fact, began to be rebuilt in 1462 and the nave 1487-1498. For the church “was so ruinated in Henry VII. reign that it could scarce stand,” and though it was and is really a parish church, yet so closely was it bound up with the life and procedure of the University that the University at length took measures to collect money for its repair.

They begged, after the approved manner of the great church-builders of the Middle Ages, from the archbishop downwards, and their begging was so successful that they built the nave, as we now have it, and the chancel. In order to secure an appearance of uniformity, the architect unfortunately altered Adam de Brome’s chapel, encasing the outer walls in the new style, and inserting larger windows. Not content with this, he likewise converted the old House of Congregation by substituting a row of large for two rows of small windows, giving thereby a false impression from the outside, as if the upper and lower stories were one.

The University had no right to the use of S. Mary’s. The church was merely borrowed for sermons and meetings of Congregation, just as S. Peter’s in the East was borrowed for English sermons and S. Mildred’s for meetings of the Faculty of Arts. For the University in its infancy had little or no property of its own. It could not afford to erect buildings for its own use. The parish churches, therefore, were used by favour of the clergy, and lectures were delivered in hired schools.

The need for some University building was, however, severely felt. At last it was provided for in a small way. “That memorable fabric, the old Congregation House,” and the room above it were begun in 1320 by the above-mentioned Adam de Brome, at the expense of Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester. The latter had undertaken to enlarge the old fabric of S. Mary’s Church by erecting a building two stories high immediately to the east of the tower, on the very site, that is, on which the University had previously endeavoured to found a chantry. He intended that the lower room should serve primarily as a meeting-place for the Congregations of regent-masters, and at other times for parochial purposes. The upper room was to be used partly as an oratory, and partly as a general library. But the good bishop’s books, which were to form the nucleus of this library, met with the same fate as Richard de Bury’s. His executors pawned them to defray the expenses of his funeral, and to pay his debts. Oriel College at their suggestion redeemed the books, and being also the impropriating rectors of the church, they claimed to treat both building and library as their own property. But the masters presently asserted their supposed rights by coming “with a great multitude” and forcibly carrying away the books from Oriel, “in autumn, when the fellows were mostly away.” They lodged the books in the upper chamber, and Oriel presently acknowledged the University’s proprietary rights.

The old University library, then, found its home in the upper room of the old Congregation House, and there remained until the books were moved to Duke Humphrey’s library (1480). From that time till the erection of Laud’s Convocation House, the upper room was used as a school of law, and also as another Congregation House, distinguished by the name of “Upper.” Meantime a salary was provided for a librarian, who, besides taking care of the books in the upper chamber, was to pray for the soul of the donors. Other books were acquired by the University, either by purchase, bequest, or as unredeemed pledges. Some of these were kept in chests, and loaned out on security like cash from the other chests, whilst others were books given or bequeathed to the University, which were kept chained in the chancel of the church, where the students might read them. Others, in the upper room, were secured to shelves by chains that ran on iron bars. These shelves, with desks alongside, would run out from the walls, between the seven windows, in a manner clearly shown by such survivals of mediæval libraries as exist at the Bodleian, Merton and Corpus. The catalogue was in the form of a large board suspended in the room. At first these books were open for the use of all students at the specified times, but by later statutes (1412), made when the library had been increased by further donations and time had brought bitter experience, the use of them was stringently limited to graduates or religious of eight years’ standing in Philosophia. These regulations were intended to provide against the overcrowding of the small library, the disturbance of readers and the destruction of books by careless, idle and not over-clean boy students. With the object of preserving the books, a solemn oath was also exacted from all graduates on admission to their degree, that they would use them well and carefully. The lower room fulfilled its founder’s intention, and here the Congregation of regents met, whilst the Convocation, or Great Congregation of regents and non-regents, was held in the chancel of the church.

Here, then, we may imagine the Chancellor sitting, surrounded by doctors and masters of the Great Congregation as the scene was formerly depicted in the great west window of S. Mary’s, and is still represented on the University seal.

I have referred to the “chests” which were kept in the upper chamber. This was in fact the treasure-house of the University, and here were stored in great chests doubly and trebly locked, like the “Bodley” chest in the Bodleian, the books and money with which the University had been endowed for the benefit of her scholars.

Mr Anstey (Munimenta Academica) has given a brilliant little sketch of the scene which the fancy may conjure up when the new guardians of the chests were appointed and the chests opened in their presence.

It is the eve of the Festival of S. John at the Latin Gate, in the year of Grace 1457. To-morrow is the commemoration day of W. de Seltone, founder of the chest known by his name. Master T. Parys, Principal of S. Mary Hall, and Master Lowson are the new guardians, the latter the north countryman of the two. High mass has just been sung with commemoration collects, and solemn prayers for the repose of the souls of W. de Seltone and all the faithful departed. It is not a reading (legible) day, so the church is full. But now all have left, except a few ragged-looking lads, who still kneel towards the altar, and seem to be saying their Pater Nosters and Ave Marias, according to their vow, for their benefactor. Master Parys and Master Lowson, however, have left earlier; they have passed out of the chancel and made their way into the old Congregation House for their first inspection of the Seltone Chest. Each of the guardians draws from beneath his cape a huge key, which he applies to the locks. At the top lies the register of the contents, in which is recorded particulars, dates, names and amounts of the loans granted. The money remaining in one corner of the chest is carefully counted and compared with the account in the register. Here and there among valuable MSS. lie other pledges of less peaceful sort but no less characteristic of a mediæval student’s valuable possessions. Here perhaps are two or three daggers of more than ordinary workmanship, and there a silver cup or a hood lined with minever. That man in an ordinary civilian’s dress, who stands beside Master Parys, is John More, the University stationer, and it is his office to fix the value of the pledges offered, and to take care that none are sold at less than their real value. It is a motley group that stands around; there are several masters and bachelors, but more boys and young men in every variety of coloured dress, blue, red, medley or green. Many of these lads are but scantily clothed, and all have their attention riveted on the chest, each with curious eye watching for his pledge, his book or his cup, brought from some country village, perhaps an old treasure of his family, and now pledged in his extremity. For last term he could not pay the principal of his hall seven and sixpence due for the rent of his miserable garret, or the manciple for his battels, but now he is in funds again. The remittance, long delayed on the road, has arrived, or perhaps he has succeeded in earning or begging a sufficient sum to redeem his pledge. He pulls out the coin from the leathern money-pouch at his girdle. But among the group you may see one master, whose bearing and dress plainly denote superior comfort and position. He is wearing the academical costume of a master, cincture and biretta, gown and hood of minever. Can it be that he too has been in difficulties? He might easily have been, for the post was irregular, and rents were not always punctual in those days. But in this case it is Master Henry Sever, Warden of Merton, who has lately been making some repairs in the College, and he has borrowed from the Seltone Chest the extreme sum permitted by the ordinance, sixty shillings, for that purpose. The scholars plainly disapprove of his action. They are jealous of his using the funds of the chest which, they think, were not intended for the convenience of such as he. Master Sever, however, is filled with anxiety at the present moment. He has pledged an illuminated missal which far exceeds in value the sum he has borrowed, and this he omitted to redeem at the proper time. It is not in the chest. He inquires, and is told that it has been borrowed for inspection by an intending purchaser, who has left a silver cup in its place, of more intrinsic value by the stationer’s decision, but not in Mr Sever’s opinion. Satisfied that he will be able to effect an exchange, he departs with the cup in search of the owner. Other cases are now considered. Some redeem their pledges, some borrow more monies, some are new customers, and they sorrowfully deposit their treasures and slink sadly away, not without a titter from the more hardened bystanders. But before the iron lid closes again, and the bolts slide back, “Ye shall pray,” says Master Parys, addressing the borrowers, “for the soul of W. de Seltone and all the faithful departed.”

We may pass from this scene in the old Convocation House to another not less typical of the mediæval University. The Chancellor’s court is being held, and the Chancellor himself is sitting there, or, in his absence, his commissary. The two proctors are present as assessors, and these three constitute the court. It is before this tribunal that every member of the “Privilege” must be tried. For it was only in a University court that they could be sued in the first instance. Here then, if we attend this court and glance through the records of ages, we shall find the Chancellor administering justice, exercising the extensive powers which he holds as a Justice of the Peace and as almost the supreme authority over members of the University. True, he had not the power of life and death, but he could fine or banish, imprison and excommunicate. And as to the townsmen, he exercised over them a joint jurisdiction with the mayor and civic authorities. The accused was entitled to have an advocate to defend him, and he could appeal to the Congregation of Masters, and thereafter to the Pope. No spiritual cause terminable within the University could be carried out of it. But in all temporal cases the ultimate appeal was to the King.

The truculent student, however, was often inclined to appeal to force. Master John Hodilbeston, it is recorded in the Acts of the Chancellor’s Court (1434), when accused of a certain offence, was observed to have brought a dagger into the very presence of the Chancellor, contrary to the statutes, “wherefore he lost his arms to the University and was put in Bocardo.” The next case on the list of this mediæval police court is that of Thomas Skibbo. He is not a clerk, but he too finds his way to Bocardo, for he has committed many crimes of violence. Highway robbery and threats of murder were nothing to him, as a scholar of Bekis-Inn comes forward to depose, and, besides, he has stolen a serving boy. After the scholar and the ruffian, the Warden of Canterbury College steps forward. He has come to make his submission to the commissary, whom he had declared to be a partial judge, and whose summons he had refused to obey. Also, he has added injury to insult by encouraging his scholars to take beer by violence in the streets. The commissary graciously accepts his apology and his undertaking to keep the peace in future. The Master of the Great Hall of the University now comes forward. Evil rumours have been rife, and he wishes to clear his character of vile slanders that have connected his name with those of certain women. He brings no charge of slander, but claims the right of clearing himself by making an affidavit. This was the system of compurgation, by which a man swore that he was innocent of a crime, and twelve good friends of his swore that he was speaking the truth. In this case the Master was permitted to clear himself by oath before the commissary in Merton College Chapel, and Mistress Agnes Bablake and divers women appeared and swore with him that rumour was a lying jade. On another occasion the Principal of White Hall wished to prove his descent from true English stock. He insisted on being allowed to swear that he was not a Scotsman. A discreditable rumour to that effect had doubtless got abroad, without taking tangible form. But he was, he maintained, a loyal Englishman. “It was greatly to his credit” doubtless. Qui s’excuse, s’accuse, we are inclined to think in such cases. The appalling penalties which awaited the perjurer probably gave the ceremony some force at one time. But Dr Gascoigne enters his protest in the Chancellor’s book (1443) against the indiscriminate admission of parties to compurgation. National feeling and clan feeling ran high. Gascoigne says that he has known many cases in which people have privately admitted that they have perjured themselves in public. Moreover, he added, no townsman ventures to object to a person being admitted to compurgation, for fear of being murdered or at least maimed. No good end, therefore, can be answered by it.

But what is the cause of Robert Wright, Esquire-Bedel? He has some complaint against the master and fellows of Great University Hall (1456). The Chancellor listens for a moment, and then suggests, like a modern London police magistrate, that they should settle their quarrel out of court. They decide to appoint arbitrators, and bind themselves to abide by their award. The commissary is frequently appointed arbitrator himself, and his award is usually to the effect that one party shall humbly ask pardon of the other, pay a sum of money and swear to keep the peace. Other awards are more picturesque. Thus, when Broadgates and Pauline Halls decided to settle their quarrel in this way, the arbitrators ordered the principals mutually to beg reconciliation from each other for themselves and their parties, and to give either to the other the kiss of peace and swear upon the Bible to have brotherly love to each other, under a bond of a hundred shillings. David Phillipe, who struck John Olney, must kneel to him and ask and receive pardon.

As an earnest of their future good-will, it is often decreed that the two parties shall entertain their neighbours. Two gallons of ale are mentioned sometimes as suitable for this purpose; a feast is recommended at others, and the dishes are specified. As thus:—(1465) The arbiter decides that neither party in a quarrel which he has been appointed to settle, shall in future abuse, slander, threaten or make faces at the other. As a guarantee of their mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, they are commanded to provide at their joint charges an entertainment in S. Mary’s College. The arbiter orders the dinner; one party is to supply a goose and a measure of wine, the other bread and beer.

Many and minute are the affairs of the Chancellor. At one time he is concerned with the taverners. He summons them all before him, and makes them swear that in future they will brew wholesome beer, and that they will supply the students with enough of it; at another he imprisons a butcher who has been selling “putrid and fetid” meat, or a baker who has been using false weights; at another banishes a carpenter for shooting at the proctors, or sends a woman to the pillory for being an incorrigible prostitute or to Bocardo for the mediæval fault of being a common and intolerable scold. Next he fines the vicar of S. Giles’ for breaking the peace, and confiscates his club. Then he dispatches the organist of All Souls’ to Bocardo, for Thomas Bentlee has committed adultery. But the poor man weeps so bitterly, that the Warden of that college is moved to have good hope of the said Thomas, and goes surety for him, and the “organ-player” is released after three hours of incarceration. The punishment of a friar who is charged with having uttered a gross libel in a sermon, and has refused to appear when cited before the Chancellor’s court, is more severe. He is degraded in congregation and banished.