academic society there was treated as a moral entity. In the following reign the jury of Cambridge made oath to the effect that “the Chancellor and Masters of the university had appropriated to themselves more ample liberties than were warranted in the charters granted them by the king’s predecessors”;[65] and in the same way when, at the request of Edward II., John XXII. erects Cambridge into a studium generale in the second year of his pontificate, he reaffirms and confirms the privileges with which his predecessors in the apostolic chair and the English kings had adorned the university: omnia privilegia et indulta praedicto studio ... a pontificibus et regibus praedictis concessa.[66] In this instrument he refers to Cambridge university as studium ab olim ibi ordinatum, “the university from old time there established.” Cambridge and Oxford, however, like the earliest centres of learning in Italy and France—Bologna and Paris—grew into universities; papal authorisations follow instead of preceding their institution. In other cases universities were definite creations which make their first appearance with a bull of institution and inauguration attached to them.[67]
Henry III.’s writs in behalf of Cambridge begin in the second and cover the fifty years of his reign. In the 45th and again in the 50th year he repeats and confirms his previous rescripts. The scholastic prosperity of Cambridge dates from this reign as its civil prosperity dates from that of Henry I.; and the traditions that Cambridge was Beauclerk’s alma mater and that Henry V. was a student at Oxford probably both derive from the signal favours shown to the two by these monarchs respectively.[68] Cambridge however was greatly reduced in the reign of John, especially about the year 1214 in spite of the recent immigration from Oxford.
The Henrys and the Edwards.
But from the accession of Henry III. onwards the university city became the special care of the Henrys and the Edwards. Edward I., while still Prince of Wales, visited the town in 1254 and undertook the pacification of the quarrels in which scholars and townsmen were engaged.[69] A document sealed with his own seal and those of the university and the borough ordained that henceforth 13 scholars and 10 burgesses should be chosen to represent the interests of both parties. Five of the former were to be Englishmen, 3 Scotchmen, 3 Irishmen, and 2 from Wales. The proportions are interesting.[70] It was soon after Edward’s accession that the refusal of Cambridge
4th Edw. I. A.D. 1276.
students to obey summonses to the archidiaconal courts led to Balsham’s judicious settlement of the point.[71]
Edward II. continued the interest shown in Cambridge by his father and grandfather; not only obtaining for it the status of a studium generale but maintaining a group of scholars there at his own
A.D. 1317.
charges—“king’s scholars” who were to rank with Ely and Merton scholars in historical importance. The favour shown to the university by the magnificent king his son was perhaps the one instance in which he took pains to fulfil the intentions of his murdered father.[72]