CHAP. III. Qualifica tions of scholars: Poverty. Age. and The college is designed for the maintenance of poor needy scholars, who must be intending to devote themselves to the sacred profession, at that time (says the preamble) 'so severely weakened by pestilence, war, and other human calamities1;' they must wear the 'first clerical tonsure,' be Attainments. of good morals, sufficiently instructed in grammar2, of honest conversation, apt to learn, and desirous of advancing in knowledge. A provost, and seventy scholars (who must have already been on the foundation of Eton for a period of not less than two years) whose age at admission must be between fifteen and twenty, are to be maintained on the foundation. The curriculum of study is marked out with considerable precision:-theology (sacra scriptura seu pagina), the arts, and philosophy, are to constitute the chief subjects and to form the ordinary course; but two masters of arts, of superior ability (vivacis ingenii) may apply themselves to the study of the civil law, four to that of the canon law, and two to the science of medicine; astronomy (scientia astrorum) is permitted as a study to two more, provided that they observe the limits imposed by the provost and the dean,-a precaution, we may infer, against the forbidden researches of the astrologer. The transition from the scholar to the fellow is Studies prescribed or permitted. 1 These statutes are remarkable for their verbosity and pleonastic mode of expression:-e. g. ac præcipue ut ferventius et frequentius Christus evangelizetur, et fides cultusque divini nominis augeatur, et fortius sustentetur, sacræ insuper theologiæ ut dilatetur laus, gubernetur ecclesia, vigor atque fervor Christianæ religionis coalescant, scientiæ quoque ac virtutes amplius convalescant, necnon ut generalem morbum militiæ clericalis quam propter paucitatem cleri ex pestilentiis, guerris, et aliis mundi miseris, graviter vulnerari conspeximus, desolationi compatientes tam tristi, partim allevare possimus, quem in toto sanare veraciter non valemus, ad quod revera pro nostræ devotionis animo nostros regios apponimus libenter labores.' Statutes, by Heywood and Wright, p. 18. 2 It is assumed that the first stage of the trivium will have been accomplished at Eton:-Et quia summe affectamus et volumus quod numerus scholarium et sociorum in dicto nostro Regali Collegio Cantabrigiæ per nos superius institutus, plene et perfecte per Dei gratiam perpetius futuris temporibus sit completus: ac considerantes attente quod grammatica, quæ prima de artibus seu scientiis liberalibus reputatur, fundamentum, janua, et origo omnium aliarum artium liberalium et scientiarum existit; quodque sine ea cœteræ artes seu scientiæ perfecte sciri non possunt, nec ad earum veram cognitionem et perfectionem quisquam poterit pervenire: ea propter, divina favente clementia, de bonis nostris a Deo collatis unum aliud Regale collegium in villa nostra de Etona ut superius memoratur instituimus etc.' Ibid. p. 21. PART II. here first clearly defined. It is not until after a three years' CHAP. III probation, during which time it has been ascertained whether the scholar be ingenio, capacitate sensus, moribus, conditioni- Probationary bus, et scientia, dignus, habilis, et idoneus FOR FURTHER STUDY, to election to that the provost and the fellows are empowered to elect him one of their number. state of the scholar prior a fellowship. him Special king tions granted privileges and exemp to this and foundation. 'In addition to the various privileges granted by with the sanction of Parliament, to the college, the obtained bulls from the pope exempting the college its members from the power and jurisdiction of the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop and archdeacon of Ely, and the chancellor of the university; and on the 31st of January, 1448-9, the university by an instrument under its common seal, granted that the college, the provost, fellows, and scholars, their servants and ministers, should be exempt from the power, dominion, and jurisdiction of the chancellor, vicechancellor, proctors and ministers of the university; but in all matters relating to the various scholastic acts, exercises, lectures, and disputations necessary for degrees, and the sermons, masses, general processions, congregations, convocations, elections of chancellor, proctors, and other officers (not being repugnant to their peculiar privileges), they were, as true gremials and scholars of the university, to be obedient. to the chancellor, vice-chancellor, and proctors, as other scholars were. To this grant was annexed a condition that it should be void, in case the bishops of Salisbury, Lincoln, and Carlisle, should consider it inconsistent with the statutes, privileges, and laudable customs of the university'.' at by the It will be seen that, just as the Barnwell Process had object aimed exempted the university from ecclesiastical control, it was society. now sought to render the college independent of the university; to obtain for the new foundation, in short, an independence similar to that enjoyed by the different friaries: such was the provision to which William Millington found himself unable to assent; it also affords a sufficient explanation of the resignation of Langton, who, if such an idea had 1 Cooper, Memorials, 1 192, 193. MS. Hare п 139. PART II. CHAP. III. been in any way foreshadowed, could hardly have approved a proposal to render any college independent of the jurisdiction he personally represented, and whose privileges he was bound to guard. Another and equally valid objection urged Objections by Millington, appears to have been the limitation of the Millington. advantages afforded by so splendid a foundation to the scholars of Eton exclusively. of William of Cardinal bequest. The countenance given to the new scheme illustrates, not less than the opposition it encountered, its true nature. Within three years after the foregoing statutes had been given, cardinal Beaufort, the leader of the Ultramontane Significance party', bequeathed the large sum of £1000 to augment the Beaufort's already princely revenues of King's College and the foundation at Eton. His own student life had been passed chiefly at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he was distinguished by his attainments in the civil law; but he had been a scholar at Peterhouse in 1388, and studied at Oxford in 1397, and the preference thus shewn for the new society over his own college is a fact of no little significance. Ineffectual efforts of the university to annul the foregoing exclusive privileges. Within five years of these enactments the university made a strenuous effort to reassert its rights of jurisdiction, and the scholars of King's College were prohibited from proceeding to degrees until they should, in their collective capacity, have renounced their exclusive pretensions. This prohibition however was immediately followed up by the royal mandate compelling the university to rescind its resolution. Eventually, in the year 1457, an agreement was entered upon by the chancellor and the doctors regent and non-regent on the one hand, and the provost, fellows, and scholars of the college on the other; and as the result of this composition the college succeeded, after some unimportant 1Beaufort, though quiescent, was undoubtedly the main instrument in introducing the new papal usurpation.' Dean Hook, Lives, v 155. 2 Gough, Monumenta Vetusta, II xi. Beaufort's bequest is in a second codicil, bearing date April 9, 1447. The preamble is as follows:- ' Iam tamen reminiscens illorum notabilium et insignium collegiorum, viz. beate Marie de Eton juxta Windesor, concessions, in retaining those privileges which have formed CHAP. III. the distinctive feature of the foundation up to our own day1. PART II. these privi character of It has been conjectured, and the conjecture is sufficiently Effect of plausible, that this imperium in imperio which this society leges on the succeeded in establishing, took its alleged justification in the foundathose immunities and privileges which the Mendicants so long enjoyed and for which they so strenuously contended. However this may have been it will scarcely be denied by the most enthusiastic admirers of the conception of William of Wykeham, that the triumph gained by the fellows of King's College largely partook of the character of a Cadmæan victory, and it reflects no little honour on the integrity and sagacity of its first provost that he protested so vigorously against so suicidal a policy. It would indeed be useless to assert that a society which has sent forth scholars like Sir John Cheke, Richard Croke, Walter Haddon, Winterton, Hyde, and Michell, mathematicians like Oughtred, moralists like Whichcote, theologians like Pearson, antiquarians like Cole, and even poets like Waller, has not added lustre to the university of which it forms a part; but it would be equally useless to deny that when its actual utility, measured by the number and celebrity of those whom it has nurtured, is compared with that of other foundations of far humbler resources, its princely revenues and its actual services seem singularly disproportionate. For more than a century from its commencement this royal foundation was by far the wealthiest in the university. In the survey of the commissioners, Parker, Redman, and Mey, in the year 1546, its 1 A singular illustration of the immunities granted to the college during the lifetime of the founder is to be found in an act passed in the year 1453 for raising 13,000 archers for the king's service, wherein a clause expressly exempts the provost and scholars of this foundation from the obligation of furnishing their quota to the levy imposed on the county of Cambridge. Rot. Parliament. v 232. Cooper, Annals, 1 205. 2 Hook, Lives of the Archbps., Iv 4. It is certain that, in the spirit in which its statutes were conceived, King's College made a closer ap- Some of their most remarkable PART II. CHAP. III. revenues were double those of St. John's, which stood second, and were only surpassed when the large endowment of Trinity arose at the end of the same year1. The comparative wealth of these three colleges remained nearly the same, until the far wider activity of the two younger foundations reaped a natural and honorable reward in the grateful munificence of their sons and the generous sympathy of strangers; while the foundation of Henry VI, shut in and narrowed by endless restrictions, debarred from expansion with the requirements of the age, and self-excluded from cooperation and free intercourse with the university at large, long remained, to borrow the expression of dean Peacock, ‘a splendid cenotaph of learning,'—a signal warning to founders in all ages against seeking to measure the exigencies and opportunities of future generations by those of their own day, and a notable illustration of the unwisdom which in a scrupulous adherence to the letter of a founder's instructions violates the spirit of his purpose. Foundation of QUEENS' COLLEGE. 1448. Another royal foundation followed upon that of King's. In the year 1445 the party led by cardinal Beaufort had succeeded in bringing about the marriage of the youthful monarch with Margaret of Anjou, daughter of Réné, titular king of Sicily and of Jerusalem. It was hoped that the policy of the vacillating and feeble husband might be strengthened by the influence of a consort endowed with many rare qualities. The civil wars were not calculated for the exhibition of the feminine virtues, but there is sufficient Margaret of reason for believing that Margaret of Anjou, though her name is associated with so much that belongs to the darkest phase of human nature, was cruel rather by necessity than by disposition or choice. But whatever may have been the Anjou. The revenues of King's College amounted to £1010. 12s. 114d.; those of St John's to £536. 17s. 44d.; those settled on Trinity College, on the 24th of December in the same year, amounted to £1678. 38. 94d. 2 There was nothing in her early years,' says a recent writer, which marked her out for an Amazon, though there certainly were some in dications of that unyielding spirit which afterwards hurried her into acts of perfidy, violence, and crime. When goaded into madness by the unmanly assaults of men who sought to blacken her chaste character, to insult her husband, and to bastardize her child, she mistook cruelty for firmness; and she who, at this time, fainted at the sight of blood, could |