FOOTNOTES:
[1] I.e., by the Guild of All Souls, the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, etc.
[2] Paro = apparel in the technical sense.
[3] This was a counsel of perfection. The bedels certainly received fees (see below).
[4] It is, nevertheless, a fact that high dignitaries of the Church—e.g., Cardinal Pole—are represented with beards; and St. Benedict himself is depicted with this virile appendage!
[5] These petitions are taken from a large and valuable collection translated by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith and contributed to the Collectanea (Third Series) of the Oxford Historical Society. They are copied substantially as she gives them; but curiously enough the accomplished lady stumbles over the word "brais," for which she proposes "arms" as the translation, evidently thinking of bras and quite forgetting that braies is the French for "breeches."
[6] In 1334 a number of masters and scholars migrated to Stamford and attempted to found a University there. This is known as the Stamford Schism.
[7] The University of Cambridge is believed to have been founded in consequence of a migration from Oxford in 1209. The relative space assigned to Oxford, as the typical English University of the Middle Ages, in the present work, may be justified by some words of Mr. Blakiston: "The University of Cambridge, occupying a less central and more unhealthy situation, and having less powerful protectors, did not compete in popularity and privileges with the older society before the sixteenth century. It was not even formally recognized till it received the licence of Pope John XXII. in 1318.... Oxford schools were renowned as a 'staple product' at a time when Cambridge was famous only for eels."
[8] The Common Serjeant was for long to the City what the King's Serjeant was to the Crown. The appointment lay with the Court of Common Council, and till 1824 the custom was to elect the senior of the Common Pleaders in the Mayor's Court. He was originally rather an advocate than a judge. The office goes back at least as far as the commencement of the fourteenth century, being mentioned in the civic records of that date.