Oxford | Page 9

part of a SCHOLAR. You are GATED, Mr. Brown, for the first
fortnight of next term." Now why should this tribunal of the Master and
the Dean, and this dread examination, be called collections? Because
(Munimenta Academica, Oxon., i. 129) in 1331 a statute was passed to
the effect that "every scholar shall pay at least twelve pence a-year for
lectures in logic, and for physics eighteenpence a-year," and that "all
Masters of Arts except persons of royal or noble family, shall be
obliged to COLLECT their salary from the scholars." This collection
would be made at the end of term; and the name survives, attached to
the solemn day of doom we have described, though the college dues are
now collected by the bursar at the beginning of each term.
By this trivial example the perversions of old customs at Oxford are
illustrated. To appreciate the life of the place, then, we must glance for
a moment at the growth of the University. As to its origin, we know
absolutely nothing. That Master Puleyn began to lecture there in 1133
we have seen, and it is not likely that he would have chosen Oxford if
Oxford had possessed no schools. About these schools, however, we

have no information. They may have grown up out of the seminary
which, perhaps, was connected with St. Frideswyde's, just as Paris
University may have had some connection with "the School of the
Palace." Certainly to Paris University the academic corporation of
Oxford, the Universitas, owed many of her regulations; while, again,
the founder of the college system, Walter de Merton (who visited Paris
in company with Henry III.), may have compared ideas with Robert de
Sorbonne, the founder of the college of that name. In the early Oxford,
however, of the twelfth and most of the thirteenth centuries, colleges
with their statutes were unknown. The University was the only
corporation of the learned, and she struggled into existence after hard
fights with the town, the Jews, the Friars, the Papal courts. The history
of the University begins with the thirteenth century. She may be said to
have come into being as soon as she possessed common funds and rents,
as soon as fines were assigned, or benefactions contributed to the
maintenance of scholars. Now the first recorded fine is the payment of
fifty-two shillings by the townsmen of Oxford as part of the
compensation for the hanging of certain clerks. In the year 1214 the
Papal Legate, in a letter to his "beloved sons in Christ, the burgesses of
Oxford," bade them excuse the "scholars studying in Oxford" half the
rent of their halls, or hospitia, for the space of ten years. The burghers
were also to do penance, and to feast the poorer students once a year;
but the important point is, that they had to pay that large yearly fine
"propter suspendium clericorum"--all for the hanging of the clerks.
Twenty-six years after this decision of the Legate, Robert Grossteste,
the great Bishop of Lincoln, organised the payment and distribution of
the fine, and founded the first of the CHESTS, the chest of St.
Frideswyde. These chests were a kind of Mont de Piete, and to found
them was at first the favourite form of benefaction. Money was left in
this or that chest, from which students and masters would borrow, on
the security of pledges, which were generally books, cups, daggers, and
so forth.
Now, in this affair of 1214 we have a strange passage of history, which
happily illustrates the growth of the University. The beginning of the
whole affair was the quarrel with the town, which, in 1209, had hanged
two clerks, "in contempt of clerical liberty." The matter was taken up
by the Legate--in those bad years of King John the Pope's viceroy in

England--and out of the humiliation of the town the University gained
money, privileges, and halls at low rental. These were precisely the
things that the University wanted. About these matters there was a
constant strife, in which the Kings, as a rule, took part with the
University. The University possessed the legal knowledge, which the
monarchs liked to have on their side, and was therefore favoured by
them. Thus, in 1231 (Wood, Annals, i. 205), "the King sent out his
Breve to the Mayor and Burghers commanding them not to overrate
their houses"; and thus gradually the University got the command of
the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the city, and became
masters where they had once been despised, starveling scholars. The
process was always the same. On the feast of St. Scholastica, for
example, in 1354, Walter de Springheuse, Roger de Chesterfield, and
other clerks, swaggered into the Swyndlestock tavern in Carfax, began
to speak ill of John de Croydon's wine, and ended by pitching