The tie which bound the members of the _University_ together was much weaker than that which united the members of the same _college_. The colleges were, in almost every case, founded by private munificence, and in most cases were commenced during the lifetime of the several founders; but when we come to look into the sources of the college revenues we find that the actual gifts of money, or indeed of lands, was less than at first sight appears. A very large proportion of the endowments of these early colleges came from the _spoliation of the parochial clergy_. Popular writers in our own time declaim against the horrible sin of buying and selling church preferment, as if it were a modern abomination. Let a man only spend half an hour in examining the _fines_ or records of transfers of property in England during the fourteenth century and he will be somewhat surprised to discover what a part the buying and selling of advowsons played in the business transactions of our forefathers five centuries ago. Advowsons were always in the market, and always good investments in those days, But not only so. A pious founder could do a great deal in the way of making perpetual provision for the mention of his name by posterity at a small cost if he took care to manipulate ecclesiastical property with prudence. There was a crafty device whereby the owner of the advowson could _appropriate_ the tithes of a benefice to the support of any corporation which might be considered a _religious_ foundation. The old monasteries had benefited to some extent from this disendowment of the secular clergy, the Augustinian canons, during the twelfth century, being the chief gainers by the pillage. When the rage for founding colleges came in, and the awful ravages of the Black Death had depopulated whole districts, the fashion of alienating the revenues of the country parsons and diverting them into the new channel grew to be quite a rage. The colleges of secular priests living together in common, or what it is now the fashion to call a clergy house, might be and were strictly _religious_ foundations; and could the colleges of scholars, of teachers and learners who presumably were all priests, or intended for the priesthood, be regarded as less _religious_ than the others? So it came to pass that the tithes of parish after parish were diverted into a new channel, and these very colleges at Cambridge which were professedly meant to raise the standard of education among the seculars were endowed at the expense of those same secular clergy. In order that the country parsons might be better educated, it was arranged that the country parsons should be impoverished!
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Seven new colleges opened in less than thirty years at Cambridge alone! Think what this must have meant. I suspect that Oxford had attracted the reading men, and Cambridge possessed charms for the fast ones. How else are we to explain Archbishop Stratford's stringent order in 1342 for the repression of the dandyism that prevailed among the young scholars? These young Cantabs of the fourteenth century were exquisites of the first water. Their fur-trimmed cloaks and their tippets; their shoes of all the colours of the rainbow; their dainty girdles, bejewelled and gilt, were a sight to see. And then their hair! positively curled and powdered, and growing over their shoulders, too; and when they passed their fingers through the curls, look you, there were rings on their fingers! Call you these scholars? Chaucer's "Clerk of Oxenforde" was of a very different type:--
For all that he might of his frendes hentc
On books and in learning he it spente.
Nevertheless it can hardly have been but that the foundation of so many colleges at Cambridge brought in a stricter discipline; the new collegiate life of the scholars began. Perhaps for the majority of readers no part of Mr. dark's great work will prove so attractive as the last four hundred pages, with their delightful essays on "The Component Parts of a College." Here we have traced out for us in the most elaborate manner, the gradual development of the collegiate idea, from the time when it expressed itself in a building that had no particular plan, down to our own days, when colleges vie with one another in architectural splendour and in the lavish completeness of their arrangements.
At the outset the uninitiated must prepare to have some of their favourite theories rudely shattered. We are in the habit of assuming that a quadrangle is one of the essential features of a college. It is almost amazing to learn that the quadrangular arrangement was adopted very gradually.
Again, we are often assured that the colleges at the two older universities are the only relics of the monastic system, and are themselves monastic in their origin. A greater fallacy could hardly be propounded. It would be nearer the truth to say that the founding of the colleges was at once a protest against the monasteries and an attempt to supersede them.
More startling still is the fact that a college did not at first necessarily imply that there was a chapel attached. So far from this being the case, it is certain that Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge, never had a chapel till the present building was consecrated in 1632. It was with great difficulty that the Countess of Pembroke in 1366 was allowed to build a chapel within the precincts of her new college; and, so far from these convenient adjuncts to a collegiate establishment having been considered an essential in early times, no less than eight of the college chapels at Cambridge and four at Oxford date from a time after the Reformation. In the fourteenth century and later the young scholars, as a rule, attended their parish church. Sometimes the college added on an aisle for the accommodation of its members; sometimes it obtained a _licence_ to use a room in which Divine Service might be conducted for a time; once the founder of a college erected a collegiate quire in the middle of the parish church, a kind of gigantic _pew,_ for the accommodation of his scholars. Downing College has never had a chapel to the present hour.
Of all the developments, however, in the college idea, none has been more remarkable than that of the master's lodge. In the fourteenth century the master of a college was but _primits inter pares,_ and the distance between him and his _fellows_ or _scholars_ was less than that which exists now between the Commanding officer of a regiment in barracks and his brother officers. The master had no sinecure; the discipline of the place depended upon him almost entirely, for in those days the monarchial idea was in the ascendant; the king was a real king, the bishop a real bishop, the master a real master. Everything was referred to him, everything originated with him, everything was controlled by him. But as for the accommodation assigned to him in the early colleges, it was very inferior indeed to that which every graduate at Trinity or St. John's expects to find in our time. The Provost of Oriel in 1329 was permitted by the statutes to dine apart if he pleased, and to reside outside the precincts of the college if he chose to provide for himself another residence; but this was clearly an exceptional case, for the master was at this time the actual founder of the college, and Adam de Brune might be presumed to know what was good for his successors in the office for which he himself had made provision. But for generations the master enjoyed no more than a couple of _chambers_ at the most, and it was not till the sixteenth century that an official residence was provided, and then such residence consisted only of _lodgings_ a little more spacious and convenient than those of any of the fellows, and in no case separated from the main buildings of the college. Even when masters of colleges began to marry (and the earliest instance of this seems to have been Dr. Heynes, Master of Queens' College, in 1529), it was long before the master's wife was so far recognized as to be received within the precincts; and as late as 1576, when the fellows of King's complained of their provost's wife being seen within the college, Dr. Goad replied that she had not been twice in the college "Quad" in her life, as far as he knew. When the great break-up came in the next century, then the establishment of the master demanded increased accommodation for his family, and the master's lodge began to grow slowly, until university architects of the nineteenth century displayed their exalted sense of what was due to the dignity of a "head of a house" by erecting two such palaces as the lodges of Pembroke and St. John's Colleges; for the glorification of the artist, it may be, but whether for the advantage of the college, the university, or the occupants of the aforesaid lodges may be reasonably doubted. One master's lodge in Cambridge _is at this moment let,_ presumably for the benefit of the head of the house, whose official residence it is; and, if things go on as they are tending, the day may come--who knows how soon?--when Cambridge shall at last be able to boast of a really good hotel, "in a central and very desirable situation, commanding a delightful view of"--what shall we say?--"fitted up with every convenience, and formerly known as the Master's Lodge of St. Boniface College."
I am inclined to think that there is such a thing as architecture run to seed.