of the despoiler were for a time effectually checked'. At Cambridge the embarrassment resulting from the decline in numbers was so serious that, in February, 1538, a statute was promulgated whereby the regents were required to discharge their functions in the schools for two years instead of one, a measure rendered necessary by the fewness of those who were of the proper standing and at the same time in other respects qualified for the performance of these duties Other measures plainly indicate the pressure resulting from an impoverished exchequer. The office of taxor to the university was abolished, his functions being peradded to those of the proctors'. The useless books' in the university library were sold. The amount contained in the common chests' of the university was found, on one 1 When such a motion was made by wme unto King Henrie the eight, bellanswer them in this manner: Ah Surha, I perceive the abbie lands haar feshed you and set youre teeth omize to aske also those colleges. And whereas we had a regard onclie to rui downe sinne by defacing the masters, you haue a desire also to browe all goodnesse by subwren of colleges. I tell you, sirs, that I julge no lande in England berur bestowed than that which is en to our universities; for by their Eastenance our realme shall be well guerned when we be dead and rot. 2 Description of England (el, Formal, p. 8. According to the arme writer these schemes of spolia. tomy were only temporarily abandonet being renewed in king Edward's sarad in the time of our gra taque-ne Elizabeth,' he adds, I lente t'at it was after a sort in talke the thit me, but without successe I also out of season.' Iid, If her (1 waitsh Unir, 1307) in of unction that these appreben. hai finally subsided before The language of the statute ap. tears to in ply that the young regents wether tralle or too careless to prevent grit irregularities taking 7'-- at lae different elections: "Nune sim eum eo res revoluta et in eum locum adductum est, ut propter annuum disputationum cursum omnes graventur sumptu, regentium numerus minuatur, bedellorum munus plus laboris minus compendii habeat, gravitas tum oneris, tum impensae, ad paucos pertineat, et error in suffragiis magnus et nefarius regentium novorum imperitia saepe committatur,' etc. De continuanda regentia per biennium. Documents, 1 438. The statutes of Edward vi, of queen Mary, and those of the first year of Elizabeth extended the period of regency to three years, the first being that of obligatory regency according to the ancient statutes, By the statutes of Elizabeth (1570) this period of obligatory regency was extended to five years. Documents, 1 459; Pencock, On the Statutes, p. 51. The number of regents,' says Dr Peacock, in one year rarely exceeded twenty; before the suppression of the monas. tries they were generally double that number, besides from ten to eighteen bachelors in eanon law annually.' Ib., p. 33, John Mere, however, when writing to apprise Parker of his elce tion to the vice-chancellorship in Jan, 1511 5, speaks of 98 regents being present. Parker Correspondence, p. 18. Cooper, Annals, 1 401, occasion, to be less than £20, and it was necessary to borrow CHAP. from other sources'. The Hebrew and Greek lecturers in the university were on two occasions paid only by the expedient of suspending the mathematical lecturer for the current year and appropriating his salary'. between of instru tion: the voluntar the publ culienate Among the more immediate results of this diminution in Rivalry numbers was the inability of those regents or other teachers three s who were supported by their pupils' fees to gain an adequate income. We have already had occasion to quote the autho- at the ritative statement of the university, to the effect that, in 1539, the colleges contained nearly all the students still remaining in its midst. It is evident indeed that these foundations,-where the tutor,' it is to be remembered, at that time represented one who actually taught,-were almost completely absorbing the work of instruction and the majority of the public lecturers in the schools found their classes dwindling year by year. The Royal Injunctions of 1535, as we have already seen, had made a step towards the provision of extra-collegiate instruction by imposing on each college the obligation of providing a daily public lecture both in Latin and Greek. A second step had been taken by the institution of the lectureship created by Cromwell's Injunctions; a third, by the creation of the King Henry the Eighth's lectureship. But although these lectures were open to the university at large, the advantages held out to those students who could command or gain admission to a college, independently of the prospect of a fellowship, presented overwhelming attractions. Already a certain rivalry between the different foundations is discernible, and college tutors appear to have taken the liveliest interest in the distinctions acquired by their pupils. They aided them not only by private instruction but also by the loan of manu Tit 1 scripts and books. Seton, for example, in the preface to his Dialectica, tells us that his manual was in use in a manuscript form among the students of St John's some years before he would consent to publish it, although strongly urged to do so by different tutors'. What Huber terms 'the voluntary system' of instruction was, in fact, fast disappearing and its disappearance was accelerated by the creation, in 1540, of the Regius Professorships. The Regius professorships were five in number, representing the several subjects of Divinity, Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, and Greek', and each endowed with a stipend of £40. As the first instalment of the long-looked for gain from the dissolution of the monasteries they were eagerly welcomed; while the liberality of their endowment added to the general satisfaction of the university. Ascham, writing scarcely two years after the event, to Richard Brandesby, a flow of his college, speaks in glowing terms of the change brought about by the creation of these august chairs. 'Cambridge,' he says is quite another place, so substantially and plly has it been endowed by the royal munificence".' Aristotle and Plato were being read even by the boys,' although this, indeed, had been the case at St John's for some five years. Sophocles and Euripides,' he goes on to this able critic appears here to have left out of account the very large amount of tuition that was now being performed by the colleges. That the establishment of the regius professor. ships was preparatory to a most im portant change in the system of aca demical education' (Observations on the Statutes, etc. p. 31), admits of no question. * It will be seen that the Rerins professorships were thus in a manner supplementary to the sove illed Barrn. by lectures, the muligeets of which were Terence, Logic, Philosophy and Mathematics, De Cantabrigia, si quid nves Andre, en jam puno nova tibi videri potest, tani divinne et immort dibus Litterarum praesplits et ornamentis Auxit can optimi principis hostri munificentia. Ascham, Epist. p. 74. say, 'are more familiar authors than Plautus was in your CHAP. I. time. Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon are more conned and discussed than Livy was then. Demosthenes is as familiar an author as Cicero used to be; and there are more copies of Isocrates in use than there used to be of Terence. Nor do we disregard the Latin authors, but study with the greatest zeal the choicest writers of the best period. It is Cheke's labours and example that have lighted up and continue to sustain this learned ardour. He has already lectured gratis on the whole of Homer, the whole of Sophocles twice, the whole of Euripides and nearly the whole of Herodotus'.' Regus Pro It is hardly necessary to say that Cheke had succeeded The Art to the chair of Greek. The appointment of Smith to that fessors of the Civil Law was probably accepted as an equally well deserved recognition of high desert. Now that Robert Wakefield was no more, his brother Thomas was admitted to be the best qualified to fill the chair of Hebrew. The claims of John Blythe, of King's College, to the chair of Physic were supported by the fact that he was an M.D. of Ferrara, and perhaps not less effectually by the interest which he could command as Cheke's brother-in-law. But the election to the professorship of Divinity is less intelligible, for while men like Madew, Taylor, Ridley, and Parker were at command, they were all passed over for Eudo Wigan, an elderly theologian who had formerly filled the office of sub-dean of the chapel to Cardinal Wolsey, but who, were it not for the mention of his name on this occasion by Ascham', would almost have escaped the notice of posterity. Such a selec tion is perhaps to be best explained by the supposition that in the excited state of feeling that then prevailed in the university with respect to theological questions, and the caution required in steering between the renunciation of the papal authority, on the one hand, and the acceptance of the Six Articles on the other, it was thought most expedient to elect to the newly-created chair some undistinguished, fairly well-read mediocrity, who might be relied on to exhibit in his expositions neither originality of view nor independence of thought. In the very same letter however as that in which he records the satisfactory results that had followed upon the creation of the new professorships, Ascham found himself under the necessity of relating how Cheke's zeal and assiduity had met with a disheartening repulse, and we are here presented with an episode of considerable interest and importance not only in relation to Cambridge history but also to that of learning at large. It is a fact familiar to scholars, that the pronunciation of Greek, like that of Latin, had undergone a great change since the classical era of the language; but that, unlike Latin, which had faithfully reflected these successive changes by a corresponding modification of its orthography, Greek still preserved unaltered the modes of spelling used by Demosthenes and Isocrates. The Greek still wrote pixa and pe, though he pronounced the final syllable in exactly the same manner. Words such as aκoiтis, piloμμeins, and άκοιτις, φιλομμειδής, pakapirns, still preserved, as written, those differences of structure which were lost to the car in a precisely similar meiation of the penultimate. The vowels 7, 4, v, and the phthongs of and at, were also pronounced exactly alike. The sel, lars of the Italian Renaissance appear to have accepted without enquiry the pronunciation which they heard from the Heps of teachers like Chrysoloras and Argy ropulos; and Reuchlin, in his turn, brought back with him into Germany the proEunciation which he had heard in the class rooms of Rome'. The involved anomaly however did not pass unchallenged by Erasmus, who in his famous dialogue between Leo' and Ursus-de recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronuntiatione,Fblished in 1528, propounded an improved method'. His 1. Suo vol. 1 407. his first letter to Cheke,-'Atqni Euce the taunt of Garliner, in hujus tui conatus gloriam (si quam |