Some years ago it was a point of honour with every undergraduate to wear a cap which was as battered and disreputable as possible. Every freshman seized the first opportunity to break the corners of his “mortar-board” and to cut and unravel the tassel. Yet once the tufted biretta, when it was the badge of mastership, was much coveted by undergraduates. First, they obtained the right of wearing a square cap without a tassel, like those still worn by the choristers of Oxford colleges, and then they were granted the use of a tassel. The tuft in the case of the gentlemen commoners took the form of a golden tassel. Snobs who cultivated the society of these gilded youths for the sake of their titles or their cash, or tutors,
“Rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a Lord,”
gained from this fact the nick-name of tuft-hunters.
The commoner, it should be explained, is one who pays for his commons, a student not on the foundation. The colleges were, in most cases, intended originally only for the fellows and scholars on the foundation. The admission of other students as commoners or boarders was a subsequent development, and various ranks of students came to be recognised—noblemen, gentlemen commoners, commoners, fellow-commoners, battelers, or servitors. These grades are now practically obsolete, the only distinction drawn among the undergraduates being between the scholars or students on the foundation and commoners, the ordinary undergraduates, who do not enjoy any scholarship or exhibition.
The scholar, who must wear a larger gown with wide sleeves, is known by various names at various colleges. At Merton he is a post-master, at Magdalen a demy, so-called because he was entitled to half the commons of a fellow.
The history of the commoner, the growth of an accretion that now forms the greater part of a college, may be illustrated by the records of the latter foundation.
The statutes of New College had not made any provision for the admission of commensales, but William of Waynflete, in drawing up the statutes of Magdalen, was the first definitely to recognise the system that had grown up by which men who were not on the foundation lived as members of the college. Waynflete limited the number of non-foundationers to twenty. They were to live at the charges of their own kindred; they were to be vouched for by “creancers”; and the privilege of admission was to be reserved for the sons of noble and powerful friends of the college.
But within a hundred years the number of the commoners or battelers increased far beyond that allowed by the statutes. The position of these commoners was anomalous and led to “disorder and confusion,” as certain fellows did most bitterly complain to the Visitor. No provision, it appears, was made either for the instruction or the discipline of these supernumeraries. They were, in fact, regarded as the private pupils of the President or of one of the fellows. In attendance upon the wealthier of them or upon other members of the college came numerous “poore scholars,” acting as their servants and profiting in their turn from such free teaching as the Grammar School and the college lecturers might afford.
The system, however, was already justified to some extent by the fact that among the pupils of the President were numbered Bodley, Camden, Lyly and Florio. The Visitor, therefore, contented himself with enforcing the observation of the limits imposed by the statutes. The poor scholars were in future not to be more than thirteen in number, and were to be attached to the thirteen senior fellows. Before long, however, the matriculations of non-foundationers began to increase very rapidly. A new block of buildings even was erected near the Cherwell for their accommodation by 1636. This is that picturesque group of gables which nestles under the great tower and forms so distinct a feature of the view from Magdalen Bridge. The number of “poore scholars” had also increased—servitors whose office forestalled that of the college “scout.” They bridged the days when the junior members of a foundation “did” for themselves and the modern days of an