A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

Europe in the fourteenth century

The fourteenth century deserves to be regarded as the most progressive and eventful in the history of the Middle Ages. All the kingdoms of Europe were engaged in wars, for the most part destitute of permanent results, yet the work of civilisation went forward with unbroken steadiness and rapidity. The Spanish monarchies of Castile and Arragon continued their long struggle for supremacy with each other, and for national existence with the Mohammedan power at Granada. Germany was distracted by civil wars and double imperial elections; Italy was torn asunder by the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The usurpation and avarice of the Roman Court produced an all but general revolt against Papal authority; the seat of the Holy See was transferred for sixty years to Avignon, and the return of the Pope to Rome was followed by ‘the Great Schism,’ which lasted fifty years longer; Russia was subject to the Khan of Kipchak until its southern provinces were overrun by the hordes of Timur; Poland and Hungary were exhausting their strength in expeditions against their neighbours or against Venice, while the Ottoman Turks were advancing into the heart of Eastern Europe. England was entering upon its purely dynastic crusades for the possession of the Scotch and French crowns, which, fruitful as they were in military glory, diverted the energies of the nation, wasted its resources, and retarded its internal development for several generations. Nevertheless, literature, art, and education flourished marvellously in the midst of the storms which racked European society. Ancient learning was revived in Italy chiefly by the influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio; Dante became the father of modern Italian poetry; Cimabue and his pupils founded the Italian school of painting; scholastic philosophy culminated and gave place to a more independent spirit of inquiry; scientific research first began to emancipate itself from magical arts; Roman law extended its dominion everywhere except in England, where, however, Chaucer and Wyclif gave the first powerful impulse to native English thought; free thinking in politics and religion penetrated deeply into the popular mind, and increasing refinement of manners kept pace with the growth of trade and industry. Universities sprang up one after another—in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Poland, in Hungary, in Austria, and in Germany; nor is it unduly rash to surmise that, if the invention of printing could have been anticipated by a century, the Renaissance and the Reformation itself might have preceded the capture of Constantinople and the discovery of America.

Social condition of the University

At the commencement of this century Oxford presented strange contrasts between the social and the intellectual aspects of its academical life. The great riot of 1297 was scarcely over, and had left a heritage of ill-will which bore fruit in the frightful conflict of 1354; the encounters between the northern and southern nations were of frequent recurrence, and there was no effective system of University discipline, while college discipline, still in its infancy, was confined within the precincts of Merton, University, and Balliol. The common herd of students, inmates of halls and inns and lodging-houses, were still crowded together in miserable sleeping-rooms and lecture-rooms, without domestic care or comfort, and strangers to all those frank and generous relations which naturally grow up between young Englishmen, especially of gentle birth, in the kindly intercourse of modern college life. They often rendered more or less menial services in return for their instruction, and were sometimes enabled to borrow from the University Chest; at other times they relapsed into mendicity, and asked for alms on the public highways. There were no libraries or museums, and the few books possessed by the University were stored in a vault under St. Mary’s Church. The laws of health being unknown, and every sanitary precaution neglected, the city of Oxford was constantly scourged with pestilence from which members of the University were fain to fly into neighbouring country villages.

Intellectual vigour of the University

Under such conditions, and in such a society, it was utterly impossible that education or learning could flourish generally according to our modern ideas, and yet it is certain that a restless and even feverish activity of speculation prevailed within an inner circle of philosophical spirits, to which there are few parallels in the history of thought. If their treasury of knowledge was scanty in the extreme, yet the range of their studies was truly sublime, both in its aims and in its orbit. In the chilly squalor of uncarpeted and unwarmed chambers, by the light of narrow and unglazed casements, or the gleam of flickering oil lamps, poring over dusky manuscripts hardly to be deciphered by modern eyesight, undisturbed by the boisterous din of riot and revelry without, men of humble birth, and dependent on charity for bare subsistence, but with a noble self-confidence transcending that of Bacon or of Newton, thought out and copied out those subtle masterpieces of mediæval lore, purporting to unveil the hidden laws of Nature as well as the dark counsels of Providence and the secrets of human destiny, which—frivolous and baseless as they may appear under the scrutiny of a later criticism—must still be ranked among the grandest achievements of speculative reason. We must remember that archery and other outdoor sports were then mostly in the nature of martial exercises reserved for the warlike classes, while music and the fine arts were all but unknown, and the sedentary labour of the student was relieved neither by the athletic nor by the æsthetic pastimes of our own more favoured age. Thus driven inward upon itself, the fire of intellectual ambition burned with a tenfold intensity, and it was tempered by no such humility as the infinite range of modern science imposes on the boldest of its disciples. In many a nightly vigil, and in many a lonely ramble over the wild hill-sides beyond Cowley and Hincksey, or along the river-sides between Godstow and Iffley, these pioneers of philosophical research, to whom alchemy was chemistry, and astronomy but the key to astrology, constantly pursued their hopeless quest of Wisdom as it was dimly conceived by the patriarch Job, pressing Aristotle into the service of mediæval theology, which they regarded as the science of sciences, and inventing a mysterious phraseology which to us has lost its meaning, but which they mistook for solid knowledge, fondly imagining that it might lead them upward to some primary law governing the whole realm of matter and of mind. They failed, indeed, because success was hopeless, but their very failure paved the way for the ‘new knowledge’ of the next century, and cleared the ground for the methods and discoveries which have made other names immortal.

Foundation of Exeter, Oriel, Queen’s, and Canterbury Colleges

During the reigns of Edward II. and Edward III. the collegiate element in the University was strengthened by the foundation of five new colleges, one of which has since become extinct. The first of these was Exeter College, founded in 1314 by Walter de Stapledon, bishop of Exeter. Ten years later, in 1324, Adam de Brome, almoner of King Edward II., procured from that king a charter of incorporation for a college, to be called St. Mary’s House, and to consist of a rector and scholars in divers sciences. In the following year, having purchased the site of the present college, now called Oriel, he transferred it to the king, who, by a fresh charter, erected there a collegiate society of ten scholars for the study of divinity. Queens College was founded upon a similar model, and under similar conditions, in the year 1340, by Robert de Egglesfield, chaplain to Queen Philippa. The rules of study and discipline for Oriel and Queen’s were mostly borrowed from those of Merton, but some interesting peculiarities may be found in the Queen’s statutes. The removal of the University from Oxford is distinctly contemplated, but, on the other hand, able men are to be welcomed as scholars from all parts of the world, though a preference is reserved for applicants from Cumberland and Westmoreland, the founder’s native county, on account of its recent devastation in border-warfare. The securities for impartial election to fellowships are unusually minute, and there is a great variety of regulations strongly tinged with the mystical tendency of the founder’s own mind. Canterbury College, founded by Archbishop Simon Islip in 1361, differed from these in its original constitution, since it embraced both secular and ‘religious’ students, and was mainly designed to promote the study of the civil and canon law. Two years later, however, this design was abandoned, and the college was appropriated to secular priests only, when John Wyclif, probably the Reformer, was appointed its first head; but he was removed by Archbishop Langham, and the college became a monastic nursery under the priory of Canterbury, until it was absorbed into Christ Church in the reign of Henry VIII.

Foundation of New College

The foundation of New College by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1379, has been held to mark a new departure in collegiate history. Like Walter de Merton, William of Wykeham had filled various high offices of State, including that of chancellor, and is well known as the designer of several great architectural works. His main object in founding the College of ‘St. Mary of Winchester in Oxford,’ since known as New College, is clearly stated in his charter. It was to repair ‘the scarcity of scholars in the nation, having been swept away by great pestilences and wars.’ Accordingly, in 1379, he obtained a license from Richard II. to found a college ‘for seventy scholars studying in the faculties,’ all of whom were to have passed through his other college for boys at Winchester itself. These scholars were to be ‘poor indigent clerks,’ sufficiently taught in grammar, and under twenty years of age. Ten were to study civil and ten canon law; the remaining fifty were to study the Arts, or philosophy and theology, though two of these might be specially permitted to devote themselves to astronomy, and two to medicine. But the claim of William of Wykeham to be considered the second founder of the college-system depends less on any notable peculiarity in his statutes than on the grandeur and regularity of the buildings which he erected on a site then vacant, and found by a jury to be infested by malefactors, murderers, and thieves, as well as the scene of other public nuisances. The noble quadrangle, of which the scholars took possession on the 14th of April, 1386, having already been lodged in Hert Hall and other tenements, doubtless served as the model for all the later colleges, and the supremacy of colleges over halls may fitly be dated from the end of the fourteenth century, when New College was the most imposing centre of collegiate life.