Clause in the form of oath administered to the master CHAP. V. tionis qua Magister sive Custos obligabitur: and by this statute PART II. the master is required to execute a bond for the payment of £200 to the provost of King's and the master of Michaelhouse. So long however as he abstains from obtaining literas aliquas of Christ's. apostolicas dispensatorias releasing him from his own oath, and also refuses to allow the acceptance of any such letter by any of the fellows, the bond is to remain inoperative (nullius roboris1). In other words, the dispensations referred to were papal dispensations from an oath of obedience to the royal authority; and the spirit in which the prohibitory clauses were enacted was identical with the spirit of the law which made it high treason for any ecclesiastic to exercise the powers of a legate a latere in England,-the law so basely called into action by the crown in the prosecution of Wolsey. So far therefore from this clause presenting any 'great difficulty,' as enacted before the Act of Supremacy, it would appear to be entirely in harmony with the legislation of the period. The difficulty, if such it can be termed, belongs to times of the reten- subsequent to that Act, when of course the oath became almost unmeaning, and, as we learn from Baker,—who found the Statutes. many of these bonds among the archives of St. John's,-the name of the king was inserted instead of that of the pope. After this alteration the statute necessarily wore the appearance, to which dean Peacock adverts, of direct contradiction to the founder's reservation of a right to alter or rescind any statute in the future. But it is sufficiently notorious that statutes of every kind are frequently to be found embodying clauses which, whatever may have been their original utility, have in the course of time lost much of their significance and effect. If however any explanation can be given of the Probable explanation tion of the clause in subsequent revisions of 1 Documents, III 188; see also Early Statutes of St. John's, p. 64. 2 The fellows at their admission were to take a strict oath for the observance of the statutes, and withal to give a bond of £100 not to obtain or cause to be obtained, directly or indirectly from the pope, the court of Rome, or any other place, any licence or dispensation contrary to their oaths, or to accept or use it so obtained. Many of which bonds are yet extant, only the pope was soon after altered for the King, or else the bonds run in general expressions.' In Baker's opinion these bonds 'were a just and reasonable security,' and such as it were to be wished had been continued.' Baker-Mayor, p. 99. By what refinement the fellow was supposed to be debarred from obtaining a dispensation dispensing him from his oath not to obtain a dispensation, I do not pretend to explain. PART II. retention of this clause down to the reign of Victoria, that CHAP. V. suggested by the above writer would certainly appear to be the most probable,—that the object was 'to prevent the juror from seeking, by any direct or indirect exertions of his own, to procure a dispensation from the obligations and penalties of the statutes, or from availing himself of an offer or opportunity of procuring it by the indulgence or connivance of those persons or bodies with whom was lodged the administration of the laws1.' to be suffi structed in and to be trained in arts theology. In the statute relating to the scholars (discipuli scholares), The scholars: we find that they are to be students of promise, as yet neither ciently inbachelors nor in holy orders, able to speak and understand grammar, the Latin tongue, and intending to devote themselves to and literature (bonas artes), and theology, and the sacred profession. They must be competent to lecture in sophistry, at least; in elections the same preference, under the same restrictions, as in the elections to fellowships, is to be shewn to candidates from the nine northern counties already named. Throughout the statutes we find not a single reference to The canon the canon or civil law or to medicine, and the master is and medicine bound by his oath not to allow any of the fellows to apply himself to any other faculty than those of arts and theology. and civil law excluded. be admitted, good charac The admission of pensioners or convivæ, as they are also Pensioners to termed, is here first provided for; and it is required that who are of special vigilance shall be exercised in admitting only such as ter. are probatæ vitæ et famæ inviolate, and who are prepared to bind themselves by oath to a strict observance of the prescribed order of discipline and instruction. lecturer ap In the course of study innovation is again apparent. A college lecturer is appointed who is to deliver four lectures A college daily in the hall; one on dialectics or sophistry, another on pointed. logic, a third on philosophy, and a fourth on the works of His lectures the poets and orators'. The other provisions, it is to be readings noted, also make a much closer approach towards bringing poets and the college course into rivalry with that of the schools. 1 Peacock, Observations, p. 98. 2 Quem librum vero in quaque harum facultatum sit expositurus, et qua hora, magistri et decanorum ar bitrio relinquimus quoad ipsi condu- to include from the orators. CHAP. V. There are to be 'oppositions' every Monday and WednesPART II. day, between twelve and one; sophistry exercises every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, between three and five; a problem in logic every Monday after supper until seven; a problem in philosophy every Friday between three and five; and in the morning a disputation in grammar between Lectures to nine and eleven; and in the long vacation, in addition to all the foregoing, there are to be sophistry exercises on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, from eight to ten, in quibus omnibus, says the statute, diligentia et industria utetur sua, quomodo speraverit se auditorio profuturum. be given in the Long Vacation. Fisher ap pointed visi In the statute relating to the visitor, Joannes Roffensis for for life. episcopus, nunc universitatis Cantabrigiæ cancellarius, is appointed to the office for life'. Allowance for commons. Another provision among those contained in these statutes, though apparently a mere matter of detail, is probably as significant a fact as any that the statutes present. We have already had occasion to notice in connexion with earlier foundations the sums allowed for the weekly expenditure in commons: and it is to be remembered that by stringent regulations in relation to expenses of this kind, the founders availed themselves of the only means in their power for preventing the introduction of luxury like that which had proved the bane of the monasteries. The pleasures of the table were extolled and sought with little disguise in these ruder times, and if the colleges rarely presented a scene like that which startled Giraldus at Canterbury, it was mainly because they were under definite restrictions, while the monastic foundations were in this respect ruled only by the these restric- discretion of the abbat or prior. Wherever at least such Object of tions. limitations were not prescribed, abuses seem generally to have crept in. The house of the Brethren of St. John was at this very time sinking into ruin, chiefly as the result of unchecked extravagance of this character. At Peterhouse, where no amount had been prescribed, 'the whole being left indeterminately to the judgement of the master,' the bishop of Ely found, when on his visitation in 1516, that 'no little 1 Documents, III 203, 208, 201, 209. 2 See supra, pp. 254, n. 2; and 370. PART II. amount sub prescribed in statutes disadvantage and considerable damage had arisen to the CHAP. V. said college,' and decided that the amount for the fellows' weekly commons should not in future exceed fourteen pence'. The amount now fixed upon for Christ's College by bishop Fisher was only twelve pence: and when we consider that the same amount had been assigned for the maintenance of the fellows of Michaelhouse more than two centuries before, we can only infer that he regarded an ordinarily frugal table as an indispensable element in college discipline. It is to be The same observed also that he prescribed the same amount for the sequently commons at St. John's, and maintained it, notwithstanding the Joe's, the general rise in prices, in the revisions of the code of the ed by Fisher latter foundation which he instituted in the years 1524 and his life. 15302. Long after Fisher's death, in the year 1545, the result of this fellows of the same society found that this compulsory economy had done them good service; for when the greedy hand of the courtier was stretched out to seize the property of the college, king Henry refused to sanction the spoliation, observing that 'he thought he had not in his realm so many persons so honestly maintained in land and living, by so little land and rent'.' of and maintain throughout Fortunate frugality. foundation garet. of the Bre The university had scarcely ceased to congratulate itself Proposed on the foundation of Christ's College, when it became known of St John's College, by that the lady Margaret was intent on a somewhat similar the lady Mardesign in connexion with the ancient Hospital of the Bre- The Hospital thren of St. John. In this case however the original stock thren of St had gone too far in decay to admit of the process of grafting, and the society, as we have already noticed, presented a more than usually glaring instance of maladministration. Throughout its history it appears to have been governed more with 1 Heywood, Early College Statutes, p. 57. See supra p. 254, n. 2; Fuller mentions the fact that archbishop Arundel, in 1405, granted a faculty for increasing a fellow's weekly commons to 16d.; and this is the amount prescribed in the early statutes of Jesus College. Early Statutes (ed. Mayor), pp. 153, 320, 379. Parker Correspondence (Parker Society), p. 36: quoted in BakerMayor, p. 572. The allowance was maintained at the same sum up to John. PART II. Its condition at the commencement of the teenth cen tury. CHAP. V. regard to the convenience of a few than to extended utility; for though possessed of a revenue amounting to nearly onethird that of the great priory at Barnwell, a house of the same order, it never maintained more than five or six canons, while the priory, though noted for its profuse hospitality and sumptuous living, often supported five or six times the number'. But with the commencement of the sixteenth six- century, under the misrule of William Tomlyn, the condition of the hospital had become a scandal to the community, and in the language of Baker, who moralises at length over the lesson of its downfall, the society had gone so far and were so deeply involved 'that they seem to have been at a stand and did not well know how to go farther; but their last stores and funds being exhausted and their credit sunk, the master and brethren were dispersed, hospitality and the service of God (the two great ends of their institution) were equally neglected, and in effect the house abandoned'.' Such being the state of affairs, the bishop of Ely, at this Its proposed time James Stanley, stepson to the countess,-had nothing to urge in his capacity of visitor against the proposed suppression of the house, and gave his assent thereto without demur: but the funds of the society were altogether inEndowments adequate to the design of the countess, who proposed to erect the lady Mar- on the same site and to endow a new and splendid college, new college. and she accordingly found herself under the necessity of revoking certain grants already made to the abbey at WestKing Henry minster. To this the consent of king Henry was indispensable; and the obtaining of that consent called for the exercise of some address, for the monarch's chief interest was now centred in his own splendid chapel at Westminster. The task was accordingly confided to Fisher, who conducted it with his usual discretion and with complete success. "The second Solomon,' as the men of his age were wont to style him, was now entering upon the 'evil days' and years in which he found no pleasure: he responded however to his dissolution. set apart by garet for the gives his assent. 1 The revenues of the hospital at its dissolution amounted to £80. 18. 10d.: those of the priory to £256. 118. 101d. (Cooper, Annals, I 370.) Baker in estimating the latter, by what he calls a middle computation, at £300, has placed them too high. Baker-Mayor, p. 60. |