Hough the blood of King Edward, by the blood of
King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard.
“Then let us drink and dance a galliard
In the remembrance of the mallard,
And as the mallard doth in the pool,
Let’s dabble, dive and duck in bowle.[27]
Hough, etc.”
In any attempt to appreciate the kind and character of the mediæval students and the life which they led, it is necessary first of all to realise that the keynote of the early student life was poverty. It was partly for the benefit of poor scholars and partly for the benefit of their founders’ souls, for which these scholars should pray, that the early colleges and chantries were founded. Morals, learning and poverty were the qualifications for a fellowship on Durham’s foundation. Poverty, “the stepmother of learning,” it is which the University in its letters and petitions always and truly represents as the great hindrance to the student “seeking in the vineyard of the Lord the pearl of knowledge.” Books these poor seekers could not afford to buy, fees they could scarce afford to pay, food itself was none too plentiful.
But the pearl for which the young student as he sat, pinched and blue, at the feet of his teacher in the schools, and the Masters of Arts,
“When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped
And crowded, o’er the ponderous books they hung,”
alike were searching, was a pearl of great price. For learning spelt success. There was through learning a career open to the talents. The lowliest and neediest might rise, by means of a University education, to the highest dignity which the Church, and that was also the world, could offer.
For all great civilians were ecclesiastics. The Church embraced all the professions; and the professors of all arts, of medicine, statesmanship or architecture, of diplomacy and even of law, embraced the Church. And the reward of success in any of them was ecclesiastical promotion and a fat benefice. The University opened the door to the Church, with all its dazzling possibilities of preferment, and the University itself was thrown open to the poorest by the system of the monastic houses and charitable foundations.
Promising lads, too, of humble origin were often maintained at the schools by wealthy patrons. From a villein one might rise to be a clerk, from a clerk become a master of the University—a fellow, a bursar, a bishop and a chancellor, first of Oxford, then of England.
At the University, of course, the students were not treated with the same absolute equality that they are now, regardless of birth or wealth. Sons of noblemen did not study there, unless they had a strong bent in that direction. The days were not yet come when a University training was valuable as a social and moral as well as an intellectual education: when noblemen, therefore, did attend the schools, more was made of them. They wore hoods lined with rich fur, and enjoyed certain privileges with regard to the taking of degrees.