Alan B. Cobban - The Medieval English Universities: Oxford and Cambridge to C. 1500

ALAN B. COBBAN

Reader in Medieval History in the

University of Liverpool;

Past Fellow of Trinity College,

Cambridge

First published 1988 by Scolar Press & Gower Publishing

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright Alan B. Cobban, 1988

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Cobban, Alan B. (Alan Balfour)

The medieval English universities: Oxford

and Cambridge to c.1500.

1. Oxfordshire. Oxford. Universities.

University of Oxford, to 1500

2. Cambridgeshire. Cambridge. Universities.

University of Cambridge, to 1500

I. Title

378.4257409

ISBN 13: 978-0-85967-753-0 (hbk)

To the memory of

PROFESSOR WALTER ULLMANN

Mythological origins

Origins of Oxford and early development

Origins of Cambridge and early development

Considerations of legal status

The office of chancellor

The office of proctor

Proctors accounts and university finances

Bedels, registrars, chaplains, librarians and stationers

The congregations

The nations

The early statutes of Cambridge

The European collegiate movement

The English secular colleges: the original aims

The Kings Hall and New College as exceptional colleges

Undergraduate infiltration of colleges

Numbers in colleges

Dimensions of the Kings Hall and Merton

Colleges as self-governing communities, with exceptional cases

Oxford and Cambridge collegiate development compared

The problem of heresy at Oxford

Provision for founders kin

English colleges as sources of patronage

Recruitment patterns: university and collegiate

Halls and hostels as agents of university discipline

Residence made compulsory in a hall, hostel or college

Number and size of halls and hostels

Halls and hostels identified with academic disciplines and ethnic groupings

Feuding among halls and hostels

Decline of halls and hostels and absorption into colleges

Contribution of Oxford's hall principals to university society

Overall importance of halls and hostels down to the early sixteenth century

Vocational nature of English university education

Lectures and disputations

Necessary regency system

Growth of tutorial and lecturing arrangements in monastic colleges, halls and hostels, and in secular colleges

Distribution of higher faculty studies: university and collegiate

Reaction against legal studies in fifteenth-century Cambridge

English colleges and heresy

Civil law in the English Universities

Humanist interests at Oxford and Cambridge in the fifteenth century

Humanist grammar at Oxford

Salaried lectureships in humanist subjects

Gradual nature of the humanist impact

The Universities as privileged corporations within the town

Extensive powers of the chancellors in the lives of the townspeople

Violent conflicts between scholars and townspeople

Disturbances at Cambridge during the Peasants Revolt

Environmental concerns of the university chancellors

Privileged persons at Oxford and Cambridge

Cambridge mayoralty of John Bilneye

Incidence of violence involving scholars

University-episcopal relations: the European context

The position of the English chancellors different from that of Paris chancellor

Oxfords struggle for exemption from episcopal and archiepiscopal authority

Wyclifism and Lollardy at Oxford and Archbishop Arundels visitation

Cambridges drive for exemption from episcopal and archiepiscopal authority and the unique position of the Kings Hall vis--vis the visitatorial powers of Ely and Canterbury

The average undergraduate

Poor scholars

Undergraduate expenses

Noble scholars

Monks and friars

College fellows

Mature commoners

College and hall servants

University extension or business studies

University entry age

Student wastage rate

Patronage for scholars: papal and alternative sources

Repressive attitude towards recreations

Prostitution

Methods of discipline

Academic dress

Entertainments: Christmas revels, minstrels and plays

Attitude towards women

Access to texts by undergraduates and graduates

College libraries

The problem of plague

Absence of student power in English Universities

Analysis of career patterns

Since the appearance in 1895 of Hastings Rashdalls monumental work The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages an impressive amount of research on the medieval English Universities has been completed. Of particular importance have been the combined publications of the Oxford Historical Society and the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, which, beginning in the nineteenth century, comprise a kaleidoscopic array of monographs and editions of source material bearing on the history of the English Universities and of their colleges, halls and hostels, and also embracing associated institutions and features of life within the two university towns. In the closing years of the nineteenth and opening years of the twentieth century, the series of Oxford and Cambridge Histories attempted to survey the collegiate history of the English Universities. While these were modest productions, and although they were not properly integrated into English academic history, they retain a residual value. Updated short studies of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and their colleges formed the third volume of the Victoria History of the County of Oxford (1954) and the Victoria History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely (1959). Although these accounts are useful, they are more in the nature of quarries for factual reference than interpretative contributions to university history. A now indispensable tool of research has been forged in the shape of A. B. Emdens magisterial Biographical Registers of the alumni of Oxford and Cambridge, in the case of the former extending in four volumes to 1540 and in the case of the latter forming a single volume to 1500. All five volumes were published between 1957 and 1974. These Registers have furnished the basic data for the computerized analysis of the personnel of medieval Oxford and Cambridge which has been a salient research activity since the 1970s and which is represented below in .