In the history of university discipline and social customs abrupt changes are not to be expected, and none such are noticeable in the transition from the medieval period, circ. 1200 to 1525, through the renaissance, circ. 1525 to 1640, and the period of stagnation, circ. 1660 to 1820, to the present age of reconstruction and extension. I begin naturally with discipline in medieval Cambridge.
In the early days of the University the students lodged in the town and were of all ages from twelve or thirteen upwards. Except in strictly academic matters, there was little or no supervision of their conduct, and, outside the schools, grave disorders [195] ]were common; the University, however, claimed power, when it chose, to take cognizance of all offences contrary to good manners, and at any rate in later days did so in serious cases. The regulations at Cambridge and Oxford were so similar that we may fairly draw illustrations from either University, and the records of the chancellor’s court at Oxford in the fifteenth century show that fines, imprisonment, and, in extreme cases, expulsion were customary penalties for serious offences against university regulations and customs. I have no doubt that earlier records, if extant, would be of the same general character.
The first college to be founded at Cambridge was Peterhouse which took its final form in 1284, and during the next century several other similar Houses were established: these societies were intended for selected scholars. The problem of the control of other students was met in the course of the fourteenth century by preventing them from living in private lodgings chosen by themselves, and thenceforth, throughout the middle ages, those who came from a distance were generally required to reside in private hostels run by masters of arts on lines somewhat similar to boarding houses in public schools to-day. Besides the lay and secular students accommodated in colleges, private hostels, and at their homes, there were also in the medieval University a considerable [196] ]number of “religious” students who were housed in monasteries or monastic hostels. Some of the colleges in later medieval times received as paying members a few wealthy pensioners, parochial priests in middle life, and even monks from distant convents, but probably the number of such favoured students was never large. With the establishment of colleges and the organization of private hostels discipline improved; inside their walls as well as in the monastic hostels it is probable that order was well maintained, but outside them, at least among the students at private hostels, discipline was left to the university authorities who did little or nothing in the matter.
The colleges took seriously their responsibilities for discipline, and all things contrary to good manners and morals were prohibited. For the gravest offences, such as contumacy, crimes of violence, and heresy, expulsion was usually ordered. Among less serious delinquencies, explicitly forbidden and therefore we may assume not unknown, were bringing strangers into the house, sleeping out, and absence without leave; using insulting language, drunkenness, gambling, and frequenting taverns; keeping company with loose women; throwing missiles and carrying arms; and the keeping of dogs, hawks, falcons, and ferrets. In the regulations of many colleges, a course of study was indicated, and directions [197] ]given that idleness was to be punished. Regular attendance at religious exercises was assumed, and was explicitly directed on certain occasions: I suppose that students performed such duties without much external pressure, and I know no record of the infliction of any penalty in early times for non-attendance. In the middle ages Latin was the language generally enforced, though occasionally French was permitted; this remained the rule until the seventeenth century. Conversation during dinner and supper was forbidden in many colleges, and of course was impossible in those cases where some book was then read aloud. At King’s College, jumping and ball throwing, and at Clare College meetings in bedrooms for feasting and talking were also forbidden. At a somewhat later date Caius ordered his students to be in bed by eight o’clock at night, but they made up for this by rising very early in the morning. In general the punishment for minor faults was left to the discretion of the authorities. This was only reasonable, for a medieval college was a mixed community of lads and men, the members being of all ages from about fourteen or fifteen upwards; and rules enforced on boys of fourteen could not be applied to men of twenty-three or twenty-four, who were in fact already taking part in the teaching of the junior scholars.
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]For all members, the ultimate penalty for the gravest offences was expulsion. For less serious misconduct, fines, restrictions on the food supplied, impositions, and confinement within the walls, are believed to have been common penalties, at any rate for adolescents; but, as I explain below, I think that corporal punishment was constantly inflicted on non-adults in lieu of a fine, which indeed boys would have had considerable difficulty in paying. As far as the younger students and the bachelors at colleges were concerned the extant regulations in regard to their exercises, amusements, incomings and outgoings, suggest that they were treated much like the junior and senior boys in a rather strict public school in the first half of the nineteenth century; and perhaps the senior graduate members were treated somewhat like residents in colleges at the same period.
Membership of a college was a privilege confined, in general, to scholars specially nominated, and no doubt the standards of work and discipline there were higher than in the private hostels. Naturally we know less of life in these hostels, but it is likely that disciplinary rules were originally made by or with the approval of the elder residents, and that the normal discipline in them was of the same general character as that exercised in colleges, though, as the members paid for themselves, money fines were [199] ]possible and usual penalties, especially in the case of the older members. There must have been more variety in the discipline of hostels than of colleges, and we may safely say that some hostels were well conducted, others not so.
It is possible that finally the University claimed the right to examine and supervise the internal regulations of the hostels. A set of rules, thus enforced on an unendowed hall at Oxford in the fifteenth century, has been discovered and printed by Rashdall: they do not differ much from those usual at a college, except that some of the penalties specified are pecuniary, and that the principal was given explicit permission, if he wished, to flog a student, even though the lad’s own master (i.e. the master to whom he had been apprenticed) had certified that he had already corrected him or was willing to do so.
Was corporal punishment commonly used in medieval times? Until recently it was accepted without argument that this was the case; and certainly in the fifteenth century and later when we get detailed information on the subject, the younger students were subject to it. Rashdall, however, has argued that the absence of its mention in earlier times implies that the birch was unknown in the ordinary university regulations till towards the end of the sixteenth century or later, though he admits in various places that glomerels were liable to it: his [200] ]authority is accepted by Rait. It is true that in the statutes given in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, birching is not mentioned explicitly, but, since the punishments for petty offences are rarely specified in detail, this proves nothing. In the fifteenth century corporal punishment is mentioned as a recognized penalty. For instance, the statutes given by Henry VI to King’s College, Cambridge, prescribed that scholars and young fellows might be punished by stripes, and a year or two later, the statutes of Magdalen College, Oxford, directed that the demies should be subject to flogging. In later regulations of various colleges, to some of which I refer below, whipping is mentioned as a recognized punishment, but often as one to which only the younger students were liable.
I have already argued that in medieval colleges discipline must have varied according to the age of the offender, and I conjecture that adults were never regularly subject to corporal punishment, but that boys were always so, and that the use of the rod was regarded as needing no explicit statutable authority. Its employment was no strange thing, for adult offenders against the law, apprentices, and boys at school, were all flogged at times. And what else, it has been well asked, could the authorities do with a troublesome boy of fourteen? In general a fine was impossible for he had no pocket-money. [201] ]Most of the colleges were designed for poor scholars, and in such foundations usually the allowance for commons was so small that without risk to health any reduction for more than a day or two was difficult; little leisure was allowed for recreation or exercise, and thus heavy impositions were impossible; and confinement to the precincts of the House was so common that gating was no punishment. A lad of seventeen or eighteen had more liberty and privileges, and in general on reaching that age was as safe from the chance of corporal punishment as was a boy of the same age at a public school fifty years ago.
Somewhat similar arguments apply to the private hostels, and the regulations of an unendowed hall at Oxford, to which I have already referred, show that the use of the rod or birch was recognized there. If as I suppose is likely, Clement Paston was at a private hostel, we have a definite instance of the similar use of the rod at Cambridge, for among the Paston letters is one dated 28 January 1458 from Dame Agnes Paston, about her boy, Clement, in which she says “prey Grenefeld to send me feythfully word by wrytyn who (how) Clement Paston hathe do his dever i lerning. And if he hathe nought do well, nor wyll nought amend, prey him that he wyll trewly belassch (i.e. flog) him tyll he wyll amend, and so ded the last Maystur and ye best, that ev’ [202] ]he hadd at Cambrege.” Clement was born in 1442, so he was then fifteen years old.