From St. Frideswide’s priory let us now turn to the old residence of the Mercian kings, in which Offa resided, which Alfred made a “king’s house,” which had Saxon towers, deemed to be ancient in the days of the Confessor, and which, eight years after the Conquest, was granted to Robert D’Oyley, who added the great keep and other buildings. Within the castle of Oxford thus founded, he and his sworn brother in arms, Robert D’Ivery, raised a church dedicated to St. George, and served by secular canons. This was the second foundation stone of the university; and in 1149 his nephew, Robert D’Oyley the Second, transferred the foundation to his priory of Austin Canons at Osney. I cannot withhold from the curious reader the legend of the foundation of Osney, as it is quaintly related by Leland. After telling us that Robert D’Oyley had married a wife named Edith, and founded a priory of black canons “at Oseney by Oxford, among the isles that Isis river ther makyth,” he continues: “Sum write that this was the occasion of the making of it. Edithe usid to walke out of the Castelle with her gentlewomen to solace, and oftentimes wher yn a certen place in a tre, as often as she cam, a certen Pyes usid to gither to it, and ther to chattre, and as it were, to speke on to her. Edithe much mervelyng at this matter, and was sometyme sore ferid as by a wondre, whereupon she sent for one Radulphe, a Chanon of S. Frediswide’s, a man of a vertuous lyfe, and her confessour, askyng hym counsell: to whom he answerid aftir he had sene the faschion of the Pyes chatteryng only at her cummyng, that she shulde bilde sum chirche or monasterie in that place. Then she entreated her husband to bilde a priorie, which he did, makyng Radulphe first prior of it. The cummynge of Edithe to Oseney, and Radulphe waiting on her, and the tre with the chatteryng Pyes be payntid in the waulle of the arch over Edith’s tumbe in Oseney Priorie.”[243]
The two priories of Osney and St. Frideswide became both of them great houses of study, but the little church of St. George had also its share in the same work. The apartments in the castle formerly occupied by the canons were, after their removal to Osney, made over to certain poor scholars, known as “the wardens and scholars of St. George, within the castle of Oxford.” They formed perhaps the earliest collegiate establishment of the university, being governed by a body of statutes, wherein mention is made of a warden, fellows, scholars, and commoners. The warden was always one of the Osney canons, who came once or twice in the week to see that good order was preserved, and in his absence governed through his deputy. Tanner gives some curious particulars of the customs in use among the fellows, and the ceremonies of their installation, and tells us that Henry V. had intended to have enlarged this college into a splendid royal foundation, but was prevented by death from carrying out his design.
Other inns and halls of a quasi collegiate character gradually clustered round these religious houses. No fewer than forty-two hospitia, or inns for scholars, were inhabited in Robert D’Oyley’s time. So early as 1175, the Benedictines of Winchcombe Abbey had established a studium generale at Oxford, for the use of their monks, and a great number of schools, some attached to religious and collegiate houses, and others presided over by independent masters, very early gave their name to “School Street.” In these buildings there was no attempt at architectural grandeur. They were only distinguished from those devoted to “base mechanic uses” by quaint devices and inscriptions over their doors. Both halls and schools before 1170 were built of timber and thatched with straw, when a great fire destroyed the greater part of the city, and the inhabitants were induced to erect a few stone and slated edifices, the “stramina,” or thatched houses, still appearing in many localities. The schools of Osney Abbey were only rooms over certain shops, and the lectures were read by the masters in their own chambers. The effect of the “Aularian” system, as it has been called, was certainly to multiply the number of the scholars; for many were able to pursue their studies in the wretched accommodation thus afforded them, who could find no place in the richer colleges of later times. To the thousands of native scholars were added those who, after the fashion of the times, resorted to Oxford from other countries, no man being then content with studying at a single academy, or thinking he had qualified himself for the post of doctor till he had passed some years in foreign schools. It was no easy matter to preserve discipline in such a motley society; the chancellor was the only recognised authority, and when his single arm proved insufficient for the task of government, he was assisted by an officer named the Hebdomadarius, now represented by the Hebdomadal Board. The disorders which prevailed here, as at Paris, finally led to the establishment of colleges with regular statutes of discipline; but this change, which had the immediate effect of diminishing the number of students, was not even begun before the reign of Henry III.
Previous to that date, it would not be easy to determine with any exactness the system of discipline or of studies that prevailed. We know, however, that in 1133, when Robert Pulleyne came over from Paris and opened his school in Oxford, he found sacred letters had for some years fallen into neglect, and, to restore them, not only read lectures on the Scriptures gratuitously, but obtained the services of other professors at his own expense. He also preached every Sunday to the people, and left no stone unturned to instruct the students in the learned languages. In 1142 he was summoned to Rome by Innocent II., and, becoming Cardinal and Chancellor of the Roman Church, obtained large privileges for the Oxford scholars. In 1149, the very date of the Osney foundation, when England was in the thick of the disturbances of Stephen’s reign, Vacarius, a Bolognese professor, began to deliver lectures on civil law at Oxford, and that with so much success as to throw the schools of arts and theology into the shade. Before the end of the century, the study of canon law was added, and about the same time the lectures on medicine began to attract so much attention that the authorities felt a reasonable alarm lest their university should altogether cease to be a seat of liberal learning. “Physic brings men riches,” they said, “and law leads to honour, while logic is forced to go a-foot.” All the divines of the day, both at home and abroad, agreed in condemning the preference given to law over theology. “What is this?” exclaims St. Bernard, “from morning till night we litigate and hear litigation: day after day uttereth strife, and night after night indicateth malice.” And in the same spirit Stephen Langton reproves his fellow-ecclesiastics for “leaving the true field of Booz, the study of Holy Scripture, in order that they may win the poor honour of being called decretalists.” Arts, indeed, always continued to be regarded theoretically as the proper subject of Oxford University studies, but in their eagerness to acquire the more lucrative branches of learning, the students were too often content with a smattering of polite letters. Hence, according to Wood, they came to be divided into three classes, the Shallow, the Patchy, and the Solid. The first did not study arts at all, the second crammed from convenient abstracts, and the third, a very small minority, laid a good foundation, and thereon built a tolerable superstructure.
The troubles which affected the English Church in the reign of Henry II. affected the university very unfavourably. The persecution directed against St. Thomas and his adherents, created such a general feeling of insecurity that, in 1169, a great number of the Oxford students emigrated in a body to Paris, where they were well received by Louis VII. Indeed, at this time there was no European country in which some English scholars might not be found, who preferred a voluntary exile to the dangers to which they thought themselves exposed at home from the hands of the royal tyrant. This crisis hastened the decay of liberal studies at Oxford. Daniel Merlac, who, about the close of Henry’s reign, travelled into Spain to collect books and perfect himself in mathematics, declares, in the preface to his treatise De Rerum Naturis, that it was his knowledge of the neglect of good learning which prevailed in his own country which induced him to remain so long in exile. He passes a very severe criticism on the ignorance of the professors, not only at Oxford, but at Paris also, agreeing pretty much with the strictures passed by John of Salisbury on the “Cornificians.” In particular, he describes with great disgust the conduct of certain “beasts,” as he calls them, whom he saw occupying seats at the latter university with an air of great importance, having desks set out before them, with huge books adorned with golden letters, wherein, from time to time, they solemnly jotted down a word or two. It was all very well, so long as they kept silence, but as soon as they opened their mouths they betrayed their ignorance. Wood, who complains bitterly of the decay of humane learning caused by the reign of law at Oxford, and of logic in France says that polite letters would never have fallen into such neglect had the monastic schools retained their ascendancy. As it was, he says, “purity of speech decayed, philosophy was neglected, and nothing but Parisian quirks prevailed.”
Oxford revived a little during the reign of the Lion-hearted Richard, who loved the city as his birthplace, and, moreover, was inclined to favour the university, were it only to emulate his great rival, Philip Augustus, who had declared himself the protector of the Paris scholars. His brother John seemed at first disposed to follow his example, and granted the students their first charter, exempting them from the jurisdiction of the Ordinary; but he soon counterbalanced this favour by hanging three clerks—an act so deeply resented by the ecclesiastical authorities that the city was laid under an interdict, and the scholars dispersed to Cambridge, Reading, and Maidstone.
Better days dawned on the Church on the accession of Henry III. The arrival of the mendicant orders in England gave an immense stimulus to the schools, and in 1229 the king took occasion of the quarrel just then raging between the civil and academic authorities at Paris, to invite the discontented masters and scholars over to England. This immigration from France raised Oxford to a high degree of prosperity. The number of her students is said to have risen to 30,000, though Wood admits that the company was not always the most select. “Among these,” he says, “were a set of varlets, who pretended to be scholars, shuffling themselves in, and doing much villany in the university by thieving, quarrelling, &c. They lived under no discipline and had no tutors, but, only for fashion’s sake, would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at ordinary lectures; and when they went to perform any mischief, then would they be accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves from the jurisdiction of the burghers.”
The presence of so many “varlets” will perhaps account for the frequency of unseemly brawls which disturbed the peace of the city, and brought sad discredit on the university. One instance will suffice to show the semibarbarous state of society in the city of letters at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Cardinal Otho, the cardinal legate, coming to Oxford in 1238, was honourably entertained at Osney Abbey. The scholars sent him a handsome present for his table, and a deputation of them came after dinner to pay their respects. The Italian porter, however, not only refused them admission, but, through the half-open door, loaded them with abuse. This, of course, was not to be endured; the door was forced in a moment, and a lively contest ensued between the English and the Italians. The cardinal’s steward, stung with the derisive epithets lavished on him by the scholars, threw some dirty water in the face of a poor Irish priest, who was patiently waiting at the door for some broken victuals. This was the signal for a call to arms, and one of the party, seizing a bow, shot the unhappy steward dead on the spot. The legate took refuge in the church tower, whence, escaping by night, he joined the king and demanded justice. Thirty scholars were accordingly arrested, the city was laid under another interdict, and all the university exercises suspended. Nor was tranquillity restored till ample satisfaction had been offered by the English bishops, who, says Matthew Paris, were ready to make any sacrifice necessary to preserve “the second school of the Church.”