Oxford and Cambridge

It remains something of a puzzle why medieval England, once so rich in cathedral and other schools, should have given birth to no more than two universities; and, indeed, the seces­sion of Oxford masters to Stamford (already a flourishing centre of learning) suggests at least the possibility that even so late as 1334, a third stadium generate might have established itself. But on this, as on other occasions, Oxford and Cambridge showed themselves determined to suppress all potential rivals: and long before the century ended, these two, with Oxford well in the lead, had won an exclusive and unassailable position in the world of learning. Already by 1322 Oxford was claiming to be older than Paris and no whit inferior in dignity; the legend of the Greek philosophers who came with Brutus to Cricklade (Creke-lade) and removed thence to Oxford, ‘propter ampnium pratorum et nemorum adiacencium amenitatem’, was current by 1350. The wars made communication with Paris difficult and increased the self-confidence of the Oxford masters; a royal proclamation from Carfax in 1369, ordering all French students to leave the kingdom, may be read as an ominous sign of chang­ing times. The period is one of crucial importance in the development of the university, administratively as well as intel­lectually; and it was not until the next century that consequences of academic isolationism became fully evident.

By the end of the fourteenth century the constitutional de­velopment of the university was far advanced. The chancellor elected by the regent masters from among the doctors of theo­logy and canon law, had gained full independence of his diocesan, the bishop of Lincoln. He was the principal executive officer of the university, presiding over convocation and congre­gation, conferring licences (degrees), and enjoying wide diction in both criminal and civil actions where members of the university were implicated. Many of his duties were undertaken by a deputy, known as a commissary, not yet as a vice-chancellor and much public business was entrusted to the two proctors elected annually by the regents, the one to represent the northern, the other the southern ‘nation’. Convocation, which in­cluded the regents and non-regents of all faculties, was supreme legislative assembly of the university, with power to enact, repeal, and amend statutes. Congregation consisted of regents only, that is, of younger men, and dealt with formal university business. There was also a third assembly, less defined, known as the black congregation of the faculty of arts, which claimed the right of deliberating all measures to be brought before convocation. The predominance of the faculty of arts - described in 1339 as fons et origo ceteris - over the higher faculties of medicine, civil and canon law, and theology, was the outstanding characteristic of all these assemblies and was itself a principal cause of the bitter quarrel with the friars which disrupted the university in the early years of the century. It meant, in effect, that control of university policy lay in the hands of very young men - the masters of arts who formed a majority in congregation and were thus in a position to outvote t seniors in the higher faculties and to thwart the designs of the religious orders. Since the minimum age for the mastership was twenty and inception at twenty-one was normal, it is hardly sur­prising that when the university resisted his visitation, arch­bishop Arundel should have complained to Henry IV that he was being opposed by a pack of juveniles.

The quarrel between the university and the friars was only one aspect of the much wider conflict between seculars and mendicants. University hostility to them undoubtedly owed much to jealousy - of their buildings, their influence, and their privileges. Until about 1320, when Thomas Gobham began to build the old congregation house, the university had no public buildings, but was forced to hold its meetings in the churches of St. Mary and St. Mildred and to lecture in hired schools, which the friars, with their relatively spacious houses and halls, were in a good position to supply. The many eminent scholars among them exercised an inevitable and enviable influence over the young, whom they were suspected of enticing to join their ranks. And, although the university did not lack powerful friends, par­ticularly among the bishops, the mendicant orders stood high in the favour of the monarchy, of noble families, like the Bohuns and the Valences, and of many Oxford citizens. Against this background, the mendicant claim to a position of privilege within the university itself became increasingly hard to tolerate. By virtue of a well-established custom, the friars received graces to omit the normal arts course and to proceed directly to the theological degrees with which alone they were concerned. The granting of these graces was a matter for congregation, that is, for the regents in arts who, at the opening of our period, were beginning to show a disposition to question them; whereas the friars, for their part, resented the necessity of seeking de gratia from this body what they thought should be theirs by right. The Dominicans, in particular, wished to obtain in Oxford the privi­lege which their order already enjoyed in Paris, namely, that the chancellor should be allowed by the pope to confer theologi­cal degrees after examination, without reference to the faculty but the regents in arts were determined that their discipline should not thus be evaded. A protracted dispute, in the соurse of which both parties appealed to the Curia, ended in a victory for the university on the main issue, the masters promising, how­ever, not to withhold graces maliciously. In 1320 the university informed the bishop of Carlisle that the Dominicans having asked pardon on their Knees in full congregation, were restored to grace and favour. But resentment continued to smoulder and we hear of further quarrels in the middle of the century, when the friars were charged with preaching heresy and reviling the faculty of arts. It was an eminent Oxford secular, Richard Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh (Armachanus), who, in 1357, accused the friars before the Curia of enticing children into their orders; and next year the university passed a statute forbidding them to admit boys under eighteen. But the friars had powerful friends and by laying their grievances before the king in parlia­ment they were able to procure the repeal of this enactment. Richard II, like his predecessors, was a patron of the mendi­cants and he wrote more than once to the chancellor on the behalf when it was thought that graces were being refused mali­ciously. Altogether, the conflict was exacerbating, expensive, and, in the main, inconclusive; but it had at least one consequence in that it prompted the university authorities to put their privileges and statutes on record. The oldest portion of the chancellor's book (Registrum A) which embodies the first attempt at codification cannot be later than 1350 and may be as early as 1325.

Quarrels between the university and the town of Oxford were less far-reaching, but they could be dangerous. The main point at issue between them was the scope of the chancellor's jurisdiction over the townsmen. A statute of 1290 had allowed jurisdiction in all cases of crime - except homicide and maiming - committed in Oxford, and over all contracts arising there, when one of the parties was a scholar. In 1328 Edward III granted custody of the assize of bread and ale to the chancellor, jointly with the mayor; a series of lesser disputes arising in the ensuing years were settled mainly in favour of the university. The town had been suffering, meanwhile, from the decline in the local woollen industry; and there must have been much accumulated resentment behind the affair of St. Scholastica's Day (10 February 1355) which, starting as a tavern brawl, de­veloped into a general conflagration costing many lives. Most of the scholars fled and the town was placed under interdict. Heavy damages were afterwards exacted by the university, an annual penance was imposed on the burgesses, and the chan­cellor's jurisdiction was extended, so as to give him sole custody of the assizes of bread and ale and of weights and measures, to­gether with other privileges which had the effect of placing the town virtually under the jurisdiction of the university. All this was undoubtedly galling for the townsmen; but there is no reason to suppose that they suffered materially or that the uni­versity abused its powers. It may even have been memories of St. Scholastica's Day and its consequences which helped to pre­serve Oxford from violence during the Rising of 1381.

Cambridge was less fortunate; and the wanton destruction of the university archives by the rebels is a principal cause of the relative obscurity of her early history. Her constitutional de­velopment seems, however, to have been comparable to that of Oxford, except that there is no trace of anything similar to the black congregation of artists. Rashdall's dismissal of fourteenth-century Cambridge as a third-rate university was certainly un­warranted, for a number of eminent scholars, including Duns Scotus, Robert Holcot, and John Bromyard, are now known to have studied or taught there. But she was younger and smaller than Oxford and her emancipation from episcopal control was more hardly won. At Oxford confirmation of the chancellor's election by the bishop bad been reduced to a mere formality by 1350 and was finally abandoned in 1367; but it was not until 1374 that the Cambridge chancellor seems even to have ques­tioned his obligation to take an oath of canonical obedience to the bishop of Ely who, in 1400, was still maintaining his right of confirmation; and it was not until 1383 that he obtained the criminal jurisdiction which the Oxford chancellor had then en­joyed for nearly a century. Yet Cambridge attracted notable patrons; and in the first half of the fourteenth century she could boast seven new collegiate foundations for seculars as against Oxford's three.'

Recent work has corrected an earlier tendency to exaggerate the importance of the colleges in the medieval universities. Until the Reformation the great majority of undergraduates and teachers lived in private halls or in lodgings. The main (though not the sole) purpose of the colleges was to afford opportunity for a few men of promise to proceed to the higher degrees which would equip them for posts of responsibility in the Church; and the numbers envisaged by the founders were very small—thirteen at Exeter, ten at Oriel, twelve at Queen's (apart from chaplains and boys), six at Michaelhouse, twenty 'when funds permitted' at Clare, twenty-four at Pembroke. William of Wykeham was the first to project a sizeable community of seventy; but even after the foundation of New College, it is unlikely that the seven Oxford colleges then in existence housed more than 150 out of a total university population of at least 1,200. If all the colleges had been swept away in 1400, it has been argued, the blow to the university would not have been crushing. This may well be true; and Dr. Sailer's suggestion rightly underlines the contrast between the medieval and the modern university. Yet, even if the colleges were in a sense external to the university they were not in themselves negligible; late fourteenth-century Merton has even been described as 'the most distinguished house of learning in England^’; and it was the colleges rather than the universities which attracted distinguished patronage. Among their founders and benefactors were Edward II, Edward III, and Queen Philippa, great aristocrats like Henry, duke of Lan­caster, and the ladies of Clare and Pembroke, bishops like Stapledon, Bateman, and Wykeham, a judge (Hervey de Stan-ton, founder of Michaelhouse), lesser civil servants Шее the chancery clerk, Adam dc Brome, or the king's clerk, Robert de Eglesfield, knights Uke Sir Philip de Somervyle who largely re­modelled Balliol in this century, rectors of churches, like Philip of Beverley who made it possible for University College to en­dow two new fellowships, and the Cambridge gilds of Corpus Christi and Blessed Mary. This flow of wealth and property to the colleges was to prove of the utmost importance for the future. For (though contemporary critics of ecclesiastical endowments were by no means disposed to exempt the universities and col­leges from their general censures) when disaster in the end over­took the monks and friars, it was the academic societies which alone survived to carry over into the modem world the medieval educational ideal of true religion rooted in sound learning.

Meanwhile, the monks themselves were not indifferent to the advantages of university education. Rewley abbey, founded about 1280 by Edmund of Cornwall, was intended to serve as a centre for Cistercian studies at Oxford; and Gloucester Hall to fulfil the same purpose for the Benedictines. But economic diffi­culties and the inveterate individualism of the old black monk houses proved insuperable and Gloucester remained 'a collec­tion camerae belonging each to a different monastery rather than a true college. The hall colonized from Durham early in the century languished until Bishop Hatfield undertook its en­dowment, and, even then, his project for a college of eight monks with eight seculars attached in a subordinate capacity, was not completed until after his death in 1381. At blip's foundation of Canterbury Hall there were difficulties and dissensions until 1371 when the seculars, whom Islip had wished to include, were finally expelled and the monks left with undivided control.

The main purpose of these monastic colleges was to afford a training in canon law or theology to some of the abler monks, who might thereby qualify for high office in their houses. Simi­lar practical ends directed the studies of the great majority of seculars. It may have been the mathematicians and philosophers who gave Oxford her reputation in the outside world and it they whose fame has survived the centuries; but we should not be misled into supposing them to have been anything but excep­tions. Then, as now, the average Oxford or Сambridge man contented himself with the degree in arts which gave him a basic education; and those who aimed higher were commonly in pur­suit of the degree in canon or civil law which would equip them for administrative work in Church or State, or of the degree in medicine which might win them posts in noble households, or of the theological degree which might lead to high ecclesiastical preferment. The disinterested thinkers were always the few.

Among them we must reckon the mathematicians and as­tronomers. Men accustomed to look to the sky as clock and calendar, to think of the Milky Way as a familiar thoroughfare,' and to credit the stars with determination of their destinies, did not need to be taught to respect astronomers. Oxford owed her reputation as a kind of medieval Greenwich to scholar John Maudit, who compiled a famous astronomical table— 'mirabilitrr inventus in civitate Oxon. MCCCCX'—or Richard Wallingford, afterwards abbot of St. Albans, whose astronomical clock was said to be without rival in Europe.Wallingford, who was the son of a blacksmith, may have owed something to inherited skill, for the instruments then available to the pr; cal mathematician—a straight edge, a square, and a pair of compasses—would often have been little, if any, better than the blacksmith's tools. Most of the mathematicians and astronomers seem to have been fellows of Merton. Such were John Ashenden, Simon Bredon, William Rede (who built Merton library), an the great Thomas Bradwardine, generally regarded as the most eminent English mathematician of the century. But two of the mendicants—the Franciscan, John Somer, who wrote an astronomical calendar for Joan of Kent, and the Carmelite, Nicholas of Lynn, who at Gaunt's request compiled a calendar of the latitude and longitude of Oxford, which was used by Chaucer for his treatise on the astrolabe, also enjoyed high reputations; and William of Wykcham ordained that two of the fellows of New College should be students of astronomy.