Leading fea CHAP. III. points of contrast in those two later codes are however PART I. deserving of close attention; especially that whereby the tures of the participation of the Franciscans in the management of the tutes. society, secured to them by the earlier statutes, is abolished scholars here on a second revision. The scholar, in the sense in which the revised sta Foundation first to be met with. Grammar for included in course of study. term is now used in the university, is also here first to be met with; it being provided that six of the 'scholars' may be minor scholars, eligible at elections to major scholarships, the first time i. e. fellowships, or subject to removal. It is in connexion the college with these six that we find, again, the standard of college education so far lowered as to include Latin, (grammatica), a knowledge of which, as we have before had occasion to observe, was generally looked upon as an essential preLimitations requisite to a course of university study. Here, too, we counties, in meet with the earliest formal recognition of the necessity of fellowships. providing against those local prejudices and partialities which so often endangered the harmony of both university with respect to different elections to ence was to be given to the most or- The fellow elect was required to "The election of a fellow was not confirmed by admission till after the lapse of a year; and then the major part of the fellows might withhold such confirmation. 'Every fellow before admission pledged himself to vacate his fellowship as soon as ever he was promoted to any more lucrative place, unless previously to such promotion he had become master; for the master was allowed to hold any preferment compatible with his office. The next code did away with the year of probation, and directed that the pledge should be to vacate on the expiration of one year after such promotion as would enable the fellow to expend above six marks; unless promoted in the meantime to the mastership. Beside taking an oath of fidelity to the college and of obedience to the statutes, each fellow swore that, if ever expelled from the society, he would submit to the sentence without any remedy at law. 'In the choice of scholars those were to be preferred, who came duly qualified from the parishes pertaining to the college rectories; but there were not to be more than two of the same consanguinity. 'And as her final Vale, the foundress solemnly adjures the fellows to give on all occasions their best counsel and aid to the abbess and sisters of Deney, who had from her a common origin with them; and she admonishes them further to be kind, devoted, and grateful to all religious, especially to the Friars Minor.' PART I. and college life. In days when intercourse between widely CHAP. III. severed localities was rare and difficult, the limits of counties not unfrequently represented differences greater than now exist between nations separated by seas. The student from Lincolnshire spoke a different dialect, had different blood in his veins, and different experiences in his whole early life, from those of the student from Cumberland or the student from Kent. Distinctions equally marked characterised the native of Somersetshire and the native of Essex, Hereford, or Yorkshire. When brought therefore into contact at a common centre, at a time when local traditions, prejudices, and antipathies, operated with a force which it is. difficult now to realise, men from widely separated counties were guided in the formation of their friendships by common associations rather than by individual merit; and, in elections to fellowships, the question of North or South often reduced to insignificance considerations drawn from the comparative skill of dialecticians or learning of theologians. That statute accordingly is no capricious enactment, but the reflexion of a serious evil, which provides that the number of fellows from a single county shall in no case exceed a fourth of the whole body. Another provision is explained by the descent and early life of the foundress. The countess had Preference to inherited from her father, John de Dreux, duke of Brittany, France. extensive possessions in France; and it must be regarded rather as a graceful recognition of the country of her birth than as a national prejudice, that at a time when intercourse between the two countries was so frequent, natives of France belonging to either of the English universities were to be entitled to preference in the election to fellowships. be given to natives of of GONVILLE The founder of the next college that claims our attention Foundation was Edmund Gonville, a member of an ancient county family, HALL, 1348. a clergyman, and at one time vicar-general of the diocese of Ely; his sympathy with the Mendicants is indicated by the fact that through his influence the earl Warren and the earl of Lancaster were induced to create a foundation for the Dominicans at Thetford. In the year 1348, only two years before his death, he obtained from Edward III permission to CHAP. III. establish in Lurteburgh lane', now known as Freeschool lane, PART I. a college for twenty scholars, dedicated in honour of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin'. Original statutes given Gonville. The statutes given by Edmund Gonville are still extant, by Edmund but within two years of their compilation they were considerably modified by other hands; they cannot therefore be regarded as having long represented the rule of the new foundation. Their chief value, for our present purpose, is in the contrast they offer to the rule of another college, founded at nearly the same time,-that of Trinity Hall,—to the conception of which they were shortly to be assimilated. According to the design of Edmund Gonville, his college was to represent the usual course of study included in the Trivium or Quadrivium, as the basis of an almost exclusively His main ob- theological training. Each of the fellows was required to ject to pro mote the study of Theology. Study of the permitted, but not obligatory. have studied, read, and lectured in logic, but on the completion of his course in arts, theology was to form the main subject, his studies being also directed with a view to enabling him to keep his acts and dispute with ability in the schools. The unanimous consent of the master and fellows was necessary before he could apply himself to any other faculty, and not more than two at a time could be permitted to deviate from the usual course. It was however permitted to every fellow, though in no way obligatory upon him, to devote two years to the study of the canon law3. The foregoing scheme may accordingly be regarded as that of an English clergyman of the fourteenth century, actuated by the simple desire of doing something for the encouragement of learning in his profession, and well acquainted, from long residence in the diocese or in neighbouring dioceses, with the special wants and shortcomings of his order. It will be interesting to contrast his conception with that of another ecclesiastic reared in a different school. The see of Norwich was at that time filled by William Bateman, a bishop of a different type from either Hugh 1 Or Luthborne-lane; see Masters' Hist. of Corpus Christi College, ed. Lamb, p. 28. "The college however though thus dedicated, was originally known by the name of Gonville Hall. p. 245. 3 MSS. Baker, XXIX 268–270. See PART I. Balsham or John Hotham; one who had earned a high repu- CHAP. III. tation at Cambridge, by his proficiency in the civil and canon law; who had held high office at the papal court and resided long at Avignon; and who, while intent it would seem, on a cardinal's hat rather than upon the duties of his diocese, had finished his career amid the luxury and dissipation of that splendid city'. It is accordingly with little surprise that we find a man of such associations deeming no culture more desirable than that which Roger Bacon had declared inimical to man's highest interests, but which pope Clement VII regarded as the true field of labour for the ecclesiastic who aimed at eminence and power. Plague of The year 1349 is a memorable one in English history, The Great for it was the year of the Great Plague; and it would be 1349. difficult to exaggerate the effects of that visitation upon the political and social institutions of those days. Villages were left without an inhabitant; the flocks perished for want of the herdsman's care; houses fell into ruins; the crops rotted in the fields. In the demoralization that ensued existing institutions were broken up or shattered to their base. The worst excesses of Lollardism and the popular insurrections of the latter part of the century may both be traced to the general disorganization. Upon the universities the plague fell with peculiar severity. Oxford, which rhetorical exaggeration Its devastahad credited with thirty thousand students, was half depopu- Universities. lated, and her numbers never again approached their former limits. At Cambridge, the parishioners, to use the expression of Baker, 'were swept away in heaps;' from the Hospital of St. John three masters, in the space of so many months, were carried forth for burial. The clergy throughout the country fell victims in great numbers; it has been calculated that more than two thirds of the parish priests in the West Riding died; in the East Riding, in Nottinghamshire, and the dioceses round Cambridge the losses were hardly less severe. 1 Masters-Lamb, p. 29. 'He had desired to be interred in England, either among his ancestors or in his cathedral. His remains were however buried in the cathedral church of St. Mary at Avignon, his body being attended to the grave by the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and 3 See article on The Black Death tions at the CHAP. III. It was chiefly with a view to recruiting the thinned ranks PART I. of the clergy in his diocese, that William Bateman proceeded, Foundation in the year 1350, to the foundation of Trinity Hall'. In fact, no less than three of the colleges that rose at Cambridge in this century, distinctly refer their origin to the plague. of TRINITY HALL, 1350. Its early statutes, as In the statutes of Trinity Hall the design of bishop Bateman appears in its original and unmodified form. The college is designed for students of the civil and canon law, given by bp. and for such alone, the balance inclining slightly in favour of the civilians. The foundation, it is contemplated, will support a master and twenty fellows; of these twenty it is required that not less than ten shall be students of the civil law, not less than seven students of the canon law. A civilian may, at a subsequent period, devote himself to the study of the canon law, or a canonist to that of the civil law, so as The college to augment the number of canonists to ten or that of the exclusively civilians to thirteen; but these numbers represent the maxand civilians. imum limits of variation allowed in the proportion of the two designed for canonists elements. Thrice a week, on the evenings of Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, disputations are to be held, at which some question taken from the decretals or the Pandects is to supply the place of the ordinary theological or logical quæstio. All the fellows are to apply themselves to the prescribed course of study until qualified to lecture; and are then to lecture, the civilians on the civil law, the canonists on the canon law, so long as they continue to be bachelors, until they have gone through the Vol. II. It is however open to ques tion whether the writer's inferences 1 'It had before been a hostle be- customary course of reading". |