and this may help us to understand the otherwise unparallelled and extraordinary change of his position, which exerted influence so important on the University. Mere external circumstances would hardly have sufficed to bring about such a change.

To explain the fact, it may be imagined by some that there was originally a Rector, who was afterwards transformed into an Episcopal Officer. But, how would this have vested him with the title and

power of Chancellor? The idea is unsupported by testimony; and is a reversing of the probable order of events. In Paris and elsewhere, the Universities began in entire dependence on the Church, and went on towards independence. In Oxford (according to this view) it was just the opposite. Nor can any date for such a change be found. For the Rector must have been a recent officer in Paris in the year 1200 (indeed the name was not yet thus appropriated :) while before this date the imaginary Oxford Rector must have fallen under the episcopal authority.

§ 28. On the Oxford HALLS and INNS.

We shall get involved in endless contradiction, if we allow ourselves to assume, without the slightest evidence, that the University of Oxford developed itself out of Abbey or Cathedral Schools. The very early appearance of Halls and Inns in Oxford

remarkably distinguish it from Paris, where the students lodged in private houses among the town's people.* Even if ever they hired a house expressly for themselves (a thing not recorded) it must have been an exceptive case: while in Oxford it was ever the rule that they lived separately from the townsmen. The few Parisian Collegest which rose after the date of 1200, were not a gradual developement of the Inns, as at Oxford; (where the Inns too rose out of the Halls ;) nor did they ever attain any great influence over the University. The great mass of students still lived among the citizens; a thing most rare at Oxford, and hardly admitted at the Parisian emigration of 1229: while the gradual preponderance attained by the Colleges was evidently an organic movement, brought about mainly by internal causes, though favored also by external circumstances.

It has appeared that the Halls existed immediately after the Conquest, and were doubtless earlier than that era nor have we reason for imagining any other state of things to have existed before, even up to the very time of Alfred. We are then led to believe that the kernel of the University was one or more Halls founded by Alfred himself; that is to say, that from the very beginning it was essentially a scholastic body, and not a number of parish priests, who undertook tuition of youth as a byework. Believing that historical criticism fairly

* See Meiners i. 107, &c.

+ See Note (12) at the end.

tends to this conclusion, I must not shrink from it on the mere ground that it is the same as the antiquarians of Oxford have reached by an unhistorical method; nor will their pedantic follies shame me from avowing, that the tradition which, ever since the thirteenth century, has represented University College as a part of the Alfred foundation, is not wholly to be rejected.

Her very independence of all Ecclesiastical Corporations, must have been injurious to Oxford, by depriving her of powerful support. After the Conquest, we find the Halls and Schools in the possession of common citizens, and the academicians to have lost whatever endowments they before possessed a natural result of the circumstances. Their buildings, as well as their lands, had probably been seized by violence; and they had no redress. Yet it may be that their own Halls had become dilapidated during the suspension of studies in those troublesome times, and that none remained habitable but those which had all along been the private property of townsmen. On returning they would be glad to live together in the old fashion, paying a rent for the permission.

§ 29. On the original Oxford Chancellor.

We cannot positively decide, whether the Principal of the schools was originally nominated by the

It

King or by the scholastic body: and the analogy of the University of Paris wholly fails us in this matter. Nor do we even know the original title of this Principal; except that we may be sure it cannot have been Chancellor, since his functions were wholly different. But we have proof that twenty or thirty years after the Conquest, the appointment was important enough to be contested between the academicians and the Church.* was to be expected that the Ordinary must at the first prevail. No fixed system was actually at work; and the general system of the Church patronage, as well as the analogy of the Continental Universities, was in favor of the Bishop's power. Thus an Episcopal Chancellor was set over the schools. Yet the person so installed was sufficiently identified with the academicians, to make it needless for them to elect a Rector as their head in the same way as at Paris, where the Chancellor had estranged himself from the University, Moreover, as his duties were internal to the University, he was naturally called the Oxford Chancellor; while the actual Chancellor of Lincoln retained those peculiar duties toward the Bishop, which had been the principal functions of the Parisian Chancellor. So great was the importance of the fact that Oxford was not the seat of a Bishop and Chapter. It may indeed cause surprise that

* The Bishop of Lincoln was especially active in the matter. [Oxford was at that time in the diocese of Lincoln.]

the name Chancellor was given at all, and not Rector, to the new head of the University; but the latter title might have given inconvenient countenance to the notion, that his election lay with the academicians; besides that the Oxford Chancellor exercised functions never any where falling to the Rector; as, the granting of the licence to teach, and other ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Let it then be considered, that the Parisian Rector, being a creature of the University, could but receive from the University the rights which she herself possessed; but the Oxford Chancellor, being a head bestowed from without, enlarged his attributes and jurisdiction in proportion to the growth of the ecclesiastical authority. Thus, when drawn over entirely into the scholastic body, by the latent affinities which existed in him, he brought with him to the University that great extension of rights which characterized the English Universities in contrast to Paris and other places.

But these points of contrast were not immediately apparent. In the earliest times the points of agreement were more influential; and on that account we may, with these reservations, illustrate our subject by comparison with the University of Paris. The unimportance, at that time, of the functions of Rector, and indeed of the corporate rights themselves of both Universities (confined as they were to purely internal jurisdiction) make any differences between the two on these matters quite