[263] Junior and senior sophister and bachelor: Fuller writing of Northampton says: “But this university never lived to commence Bachelor of Art, Senior Sophister was all the standing it attained unto. For, four years after,” etc.
On tutors’ bills a century ago the style of dominus was always given to bachelors, that of “Mr.” to masters; the undergraduate had to be content with “freshman” or “sophister.” The bachelors are still designated dominus in the degree lists; a style which reminds us of the clerical “dan” of Chaucer’s time, and the Scotch “dominie” for a schoolmaster. For the degree ceremonies and processions see Peacock, Appendix A.
[264] Regent: regere like legere, to teach; cf. the doctores legentes and non-legentes of Bologna: regere scholas, and officium regendi occur in Bury school records, xii c. (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 14,848, fol. 136). A congregation of the Cambridge masters, regents and non-regents, met in S. Mary’s church as early as 1275.
[265] It must be realised that the degree in arts always differed from degrees in theology law and medicine inasmuch as these latter implied competence to exercise the corresponding professions. There was no such corresponding profession in the case of arts, except that of the schoolmaster. The clergyman, lawyer, or doctor at least exercised himself in these subjects, but the “artist” unless he was a regent-master, or a magister scholarum elsewhere, left his studies when he left his university.
[266] “The Tripos is a paper containing the names of the principal graduates for the year. It also contains 2 copies of verses written by two of the undergraduates, who are appointed to that employment by the proctors.“—Dyer. An extract from one of these sets of tripos verses is given in Dyer, Hist. Camb. ii. 89.
[267] It was at this time that the moderators were substituted for the proctors, see p. 183.
[268] pp. 168, 169.
[269] Cf. p. 189, the lecture.
[270] The derivation is Prof. Skeat’s.
[271] The school of glomery was nourishing in 1452 (Ely Register anno 1452); but a few years previously, when the statutes of King’s College were written, it was understood that grammar would be studied at Eton not at Cambridge. A century later (1549) the parliamentary commissioners introduced mathematics into the trivium where it replaced grammar. A school of grammar existed at the university side by side with the school of glomery [see the provision for the teaching of grammar at God’s House (below) and Peterhouse and Clare p. 153 of the last chapter]. As late as 1500 there was a magister grammaticae and a magister glomeriae, who, in ejus defectu, is represented by proctors (Stat. Cant.). “The Master of Grammar shall be browght by the Bedyll to the Place where the Master of Glomerye dwellyth, at iij of the Clocke, and the Master of Glomerye shall go before, and his eldest son nexte him.” A.D. 1591 (Stokys in G. Peacock). By Fuller’s time the master of glomery had ceased to exist. His work seems to have resembled the preparatory work of the Previous Examinations at the university to-day.