“The universities were well filled, by the sons of yeomen chiefly. The cost of supporting them at the colleges was little, and wealthy men took a pride in helping forward any boys of promise[38,] [38a] (Latimer’s Sermons, p. 64). It seems clear also, as the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were sinking lower and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible in a portion at least of the laity.”
But Grosseteste mentions a “noble” scholar at Oxford (Epist. 129), and Edward the Black Prince and Henry V. are said to have been students of Queen’s College, Oxford. Wolsey himself was a College tutor at Oxford, and had among his pupils the sons of the Marquess of Dorset, who afterwards gave him his first preferment, the living of Lymington. (Chappell.)
The legend runs that the first school at Oxford was founded by King Alfred[39], and that Oxford was a place of study in the time of Edward the Confessor (1041-66). If one may quote a book now considered to be ‘a monkish forgery and an exploded authority,’ Ingulfus, who was Abbot of Croyland, in the Isle of Ely, under William the Conqueror, says of himself that he was educated first at Westminster, and then passed to Oxford, where he made proficiency in such books of Aristotle as were then accessible to students,[40] and in the first two books of Tully’s Rhetoric.—Malden, On the Origin of Universities, 1835, p. 71.
In 1201 Oxford is called a University, and said to have contained 3000 scholars; in 1253 its first College (University) is founded. In 1244, Hen. III. grants it its first privileges as a corporate body, and confirms and extends them in 1245. In his reign, Wood says the number of scholars amounted to 30,000, a number no doubt greatly exaggerated.
In the reign of Stephen, we know that Vacarius, a Lombard by birth, who had studied the civil law at Bologna, came into England, and formed a school of law at Oxford[41] ... he remained in England in the reign of Henry II. On account of the difficulty and expense of obtaining copies of the original books of the Roman law, and the poverty of his English scholars, Vacarius [ab. 1149, A.D.] compiled an abridgment of the Digests and Codex, in which their most essential parts were preserved, with some difference of arrangement, and illustrated from other law-books.... It bore on its title that it was “pauperibus presertim destinatus;” and hence the Oxford students of law obtained the name of Pauperists.—Malden, p. 72-3.
POVERTY OF UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS.
Roger Bacon (who died 1248[41a]) speaks of a young fellow who came
to him, aged 15, not having wherewithal to live, or finding proper masters: “because he was obliged to serve those who gave him necessaries, during two years found no one to teach him a word in the things he learned.” —Opus Tertium, cap. xx. In 1214 the Commonalty of Oxford agreed to pay 52s. yearly for the use of poor scholars, and to give 100 of them a meal of bread, ale, and pottage, with one large dish of flesh or fish, every St Nicholas day.—Wood’s An. i. 185. Wood’s Annals (ed. Gutch, v. i. p. 619-20) also notes that in 1461 A.D. divers Scholars were forced to get a license under the Chancellor’s hand and seal (according to the Stat. 12 Ric. II., A.D. 1388, Ib., p. 519) to beg: and Sir Thos. More says “then may wee yet, like poor Scholars of Oxford, go a begging with our baggs & wallets, & sing salve Regina at rich mens dores.” On this point we may also compare the Statutes of Walter de Merton for his College at Oxford, A.D. 1274, ed. Halliwell, 1843, p. 19:
Cap. 13. De admissione scholarium.
Hoc etiam in eadem domo specialiter observari volo et decerno, ut circa eos, qui ad hujusmodi eleemosinæ participationem admittendi fuerint, diligenti solicitudine caveatur, ne qui præter castos, honestos, pacificos, humiles, indigentes, ad studium habiles ac proficere volentes, admittantur. Ad quorum agnitionem singulis, cum in dicta societate fuerint admittendi sustentationis gratia in eadem, ad annum unum utpote probationis causa primitus concedatur, ut sic demum si in dictis conditionibus laudabiliter se habuerint, in dictam congregationem admittantur.