Universities in other towns. The licence to found a university at Northampton.
One of the odd things about Merton’s movements is that though he began buying land in Oxford the year after the Malden foundation (1265), he made his chief acquisition in Cambridge as late as 1269, and that a year later when he issued a revised set of statutes (1270) he still makes no allusion to any change of locality. It is possible that in 1265 when he wrote “at Oxford or at any other university” he had in mind the tentatives then being made to found an English university in some other town. It was in fact in 1262, the 45th year of the reign of Henry III., that Cambridge students had migrated to Northampton with the king’s licence to found a university. The traditional bickerings between southerners and northerners three years previously had been the cause of the exodus, and the Cambridge scholars found many Oxonians already there who had migrated from Oxford after their quarrel with the papal legate in 1238 but had obtained no licence to institute a university. The licence accorded to the masters and scholars of Cambridge university was withdrawn four years later on a representation being made to Henry III. that a university at Northampton must prove prejudicial to Oxford.[87] Migrations of students to other towns took place throughout the xiii century. They begin in 1209 when there was a general exodus from Oxford not only to Cambridge but to the town of Reading. Thirty years later the Oxonians migrated to Northampton and Salisbury, being followed to the former in 1262 as we have just seen by many Cambridge “masters and scholars.” These migrations certainly indicate that Oxford and Cambridge were not yet regarded as such permanent homes of English scholarship that other sites could not be substituted. The event which most impressed the popular imagination occurred when both universities had attained to European fame—the exodus in the reign of Edward III. from Oxford to Stamford which caused the king in 1333 to issue his royal letters forbidding any one to teach there. It had been prophesied that the studies pursued at Oxford would be transferred to Stamford, and the Cambridge floods gave rise to another prophecy, recorded by Spenser, which showed that the Stamford incident still occupied men’s minds. The flat Lincolnshire country would, it was said, become completely flooded, and Stamford then would
—— shine in learning more than ever did
Cambridge or Oxford England’s goodly beames.
No migration took place from Cambridge after the foundation of its first college. But before we enter upon this period of its history, and find ourselves in the brilliant epoch which was so soon to overtake the university in the xiv century, let us see what arrangements were made for the accommodation of the scholar population previous to the existence of colleges.
At first—in the xii and the early part of the xiii centuries—scholars lived each at his own charges; perhaps groups of three and four would club together, but every scholar was then, as Fuller expressively has it, “his own founder and his own benefactor.”[88] The rescript of the early years of Henry III., already cited,
A.D. 1231 15th of Henry III.
introduces us to the town hostels—hospitia locanda; and establishes the taxing of lodging house charges by the taxatores, a usage probably rendered the more necessary owing to the great influx of students two years before, when the demand for lodgings must have been very much in excess of the supply.[89] These town hostels, the result of town enterprise, were subject to the four “taxors” only, and were under no other academic supervision.[90] It seems highly probable, however, that the king’s rescript gave rise to the university hostels, some thirty of which were in existence fifty years later. In any case the rescript leads us to conclude that the town hostels were in existence in the previous century, and supplies us with a date before which we cannot suppose that any university hostel existed.
The university hostel.
The university hostelries or inns for the accommodation of scholars who lived there at their own charges were intermediate between the town lodging house and the college, which they both anticipate and supplement. A number of scholars joined together, elected their own principal, and paid him at a fixed rate for board and lodging. At first, therefore, the university like the town hostel was a private enterprise, scholars undertook the charge of them in their private capacity. The head of the hostel was called the Principal. Later on these institutions changed their democratic character. The government passed entirely into the hands of the principal, certain oaths were exacted of him, and he kept a list of the scholars in his house.[91] The principal collected a rent from the inmates, though in some hostels the accommodation appears to have been free. All these changes, we may imagine, belong to the time when some of the hostels were affiliated to colleges, becoming thenceforward subject in all respects to the customs and discipline of the endowed foundation. Thus S. Mary’s hostel, where Matthew Parker studied, was affiliated to Corpus, Borden’s belonged to S. John’s hospital, then to Ely, and in 1448 was affiliated to Clare; S. Bernard’s belonged first to Queens’ then to Corpus; S. Austin’s to King’s. The hostels took their name sometimes from the neighbouring church or chapel, or other saintly patron, and sometimes from their proprietor. “Newmarket” and “Harleston” hostels must have served for students from these neighbouring towns. The monks who first came to study in Cambridge lived in lodgings; but these were soon exchanged for the monastic hostel, hence “Ely hostel” and “Monks’ hostel.”[92] Those zealous learners the friars of the Sack had Jesu hostel, dismantled in 1307, the Sempringham canons had S. Edmund’s hostel, the Barnwell canons had a hostel in the town called S. Augustine’s, and the hospitaller knights of S. John owned Crouched and S. John’s hostels in School Lane and Mill Street.[93] Rud’s offers a good example of a xiii century Cambridge hostel, and Physwick of one of the xivth. The former is mentioned in 1283 and was part of the compensation allowed in that year to S. John’s for the alienated hostels at Peterhouse,[94] it still exists, almost unaltered, and forms part of the Castle inn in S. Andrew’s Street. Physwick was the private residence of an esquire bedell of that name who bequeathed it for the purposes of a hostel in 1393. It was affiliated to Gonville and was in use until absorbed in the buildings of Trinity College in the xvi century.
Cambridge hostels were highly important foundations. The 8 jurists’ hostels housed eighty and a hundred students apiece, and the large hostels of S. Bernard, S. Thomas, S. Mary, and S. Augustine sometimes housed twenty and thirty regents without counting the non-regents and students.[95] A large proportion of men whose names are not to be found on the books of any college received their education in these houses. The Inns, of which there were three at Cambridge—Oving’s, S. Zachary’s, and S. Paul’s—were smaller and less important hostels and appear to have been frequented by the richer students. Hostel and hall or college existed side by side through the xiii, xiv, and xv centuries. Indeed until the college system was well established the hostels greatly exceeded the endowed halls in number, and they continued to supplement the latter until the completion of the large colleges at the renascence. Some twenty were erected as late as the xv and the opening years of the xvi centuries. During the xiv and xv centuries many hostels were destroyed to make room for the colleges; and in the xvith those which remained were abandoned, Trinity