Continuous confinement within the walls of the college (walling) or confinement during certain hours (gating) was another form of punishment. A case of walling occurred at one of the smaller colleges in Cambridge in 1872, but I know of no more recent instance. Gating is still in force. It causes some social inconvenience. As far as it goes, it promotes regular hours and economy, and it has no indirect ill-effects. Accordingly it serves well to mark dissatisfaction and act as a warning.
Here is an old-time example from the records of Trinity, 19 July 1652, of the infliction of this and [219] ]other penalties interesting from the name of the scholar on whom it was inflicted:
Agreed that Dryden be put out of commons for a fortnight at least, and that he goe not out of the colledg during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons, without express leave of the master or vice-master; and that at the end of the fortnight he read a confession of his crime, in the hall, at the dinner time; at the three fellowes tables.
His offence was disobedience to the vice-master, and his contumacy in submitting himself to discipline.
Impositions.
Another tolerably obvious punishment was the setting of impositions. The imposition might be the learning of lines by heart or the delivery of a declamation on some given subject, or the production in writing of so many lines of a classical work or of an analysis of some book. Impositions in writing were constantly done vicariously, and if so, the punishment was little more than a fine: apparently this abuse of the practice was well known.
The tasks set were very heavy. In the Gradus, 1803, the learning by heart of the first book of the Iliad is mentioned as a possible, though very severe imposition. Similarly, according to J. M. F. Wright, a thousand lines of Homer would have been regarded in 1815 as an unusually sharp punishment, but such as might have been given in lieu of rustication. Other impositions mentioned are the learning by [220] ]heart of a satire of Juvenal, and the production of an analysis of Butler’s Analogy.
At Trinity the deans were provided with long sheets of paper on which were printed in double columns forms such as the following:
... to transcribe ... lines of Virgil’s Aeneid, beginning at line ... book ..., and to deliver it to the Junior Dean after morning Chapel on Tuesday.
... to transcribe ... lines of Homer’s Iliad, beginning at line ... book ..., and to deliver it to the Senior Dean after Morning Chapel on Thursday.
... to repeat ... lines of ... by order of the Junior (or Senior) Dean.
These were filled up by the deans, cut off, and distributed by the chapel-clerk to the men concerned. Customarily in Trinity the senior dean gave impositions from the Iliad to be delivered on a Thursday, an the junior dean from the Aeneid to be delivered on a Tuesday. Forms for putting men out of commons, and admonishing them were printed in the same way on sheets, to be used as occasions arose.