[4.] Foreign University Education. That some of our nobles sent their sons to be educated in the French universities (whence they sometimes imported foreign vices into England[57]) is witnessed by some verses in a Latin Poem “in MS. Digby, No. 4 (Bodleian Library) of the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century,” printed by Mr Thomas Wright in his Anecdota Literaria, p. 38.
Filii nobilium, dum sunt juniores,
Mittuntur in Franciam fieri doctores;
Quos prece vel pretio domant corruptores,
Sic prætaxatos referunt artaxata mores.
An English nation or set of students of the Faculty of Arts at Paris existed in 1169; after 1430 the name was changed to the German nation. Besides the students from the French provinces subject to the English, as Poictou, Guienne, &c, it included the English, Scottish, Irish, Poles, Germans, &c. —Encyc. Brit. John of Salisbury (born 1110) says that he was twelve years studying at Paris on his own account. Thomas a Becket, as a young man, studied at Paris. Giraldus Cambrensis (born 1147) went to Paris for education; so did Alexander Neckham (died 1227). Henry says,
“The English, in particular, were so numerous, that they occupied several schools or colleges; and made so distinguished a figure by their genius and learning, as well as by their generous manner of living, that they attracted the notice of all strangers. This appears from the following verses, describing the behaviour of a stranger on
his first arrival in Paris, composed by Negel Wircker, an English student there, A.D. 1170:—
The stranger dress’d, the city first surveys,
A church he enters, to his God he prays.