PART IL CHAP. III. Gilbert Worthington, and Peter Hirforde, who had espoused and subsequently renounced the doctrines of Wyclif'. The Mendicants whom, in spite of his advocacy on their behalf, he had made his bitter enemies, were equally zealous in their Per persecution. His arraignment before archbishop Bourchier, his humiliating recantation, and subsequent consignment to that obscurity in which his days were ended, are details that belong to other pages than ours. It has been conjectured that political feeling had its share in the hostility which he encountered. The Lancastrian party was distinguished by its leaning towards Ultramontanism, and it was within two years of the first battle of St. Albans, when the Yorkists were every where in the ascendant, that Pecock was brought to trial. It is certain that in both universities his doctrine attained to considerable notoriety and commanded a certain following. In the year 1457 they are to be found prominently engaging the attention of the authorities of Oxford'. In the early statutes of King's College is one binding every scholar, on the completion of his year of probation, 'never throughout his life to favour any condemned tenets, the errors or heresies of John Wyclif, Reginald Pecock, or any other hereticʻ;' and this prohibition is repeated 1 Cooper, Annals, 1 153. Hare MSS. 11 26. Lewis, Life of Pecock, P. 142. See dean Hook, Lires of the Archbishops, v 308. Pecock, says this writer, had suffered in the cause of the pope. He had maintained the papal cause against the councils of the Church; he had asserted, with Martin v, that the pope was the monarch of the Church, and that every bishop was only the pope's delegate: he had done boldly what Martin v had called upon Chicheley and the bi hs of his time to do; he had protested against those statutes of provisors and præmunire which the c'ergy and luty had passed as a safegu rd against papal aggression; and surely the pope would not desert him in his hour of ned. If the pope possessed or claimel the supremacy for which Pecock contende 1, he would Purely exercise it in behalf of one, who was enduring hardship in the 4 Item statuimus......quod quilibet scholaris......juret quod non favebit opinionibus, damnatis erroribus, aut hæresibus Johannis Wyck lyfe, Reginaldi Pecocke, neque alicujus alterius hæretici, quamdiu vixerit in hoc mundo, sub pœna perjurii et expulsionis ipso facto, Stat. Coll. Regil. Cantabr. c. ult. in fine. See also Prof. Babington's Introd. to the Repressor, p. xxxiv. The date assigned to the above statutes in the Documents is 1443; but at that time Pecock's doctrines were not fully even so late as the year 1475, in the Statuta Antigua of chap m Queens' College'. PANT IL The literary activity of the fifteenth century furnishes but little illustration of much value with respect to university studies after the time of Reginald Pecock. The quickening of thought which had followed upon the introduction of the New Aristotle had died away. Scholasticism had done its work and was falling into its dotage. Even before the water break of the civil wars, Oxford, in a menorable plaint pr served to us by Wood, declared that her halls and Lestels were deserted, and that she was almost abandoned of bermat own children. The intercourse with the continent was now rare and fitful. Paris attracted but few Englishmen to her schools; the foreigner was seldom to be seen in the streets of Cambridge or Oxford. Occasionally indeed curiosity or necessity brought some continental scholar to our shores, but the gross ignorance and uncultured tone that everywhere prevailed effectually discouraged a lengthened sojourn Ameg those who were thus impelled, in the early part of the ontury, was the distinguished Italian scholar, Prio Braccioling He came fresh from the discovery of many a long lost masterpiece of Latin literature, and from intercourse with that rising school of Italian literati, represented by men like Aretino, known, and certainly had not been condemned. This is therefore another instance of a by no means uncommon occurrence, viz. the incorporation of a later statute in the Stituta Antiqua of our colleges, without any intimation that it is of a later date than that when the statutes were first drawn up. In the oath administered to the fellows it is required by the fifth cluse, Jurabit quod non fovebit aut defondet, hereses vel errores Jolan nis Wicklyf, Reginaldi Pecocke, aut einseunque alterius hæretici per ecclesiam damnati.' MS, Statutes of 1475 in po session of the authorities If Queens' Collone, ↑ Jam si quidem el riosa mat rolim tam be at a proue fa eun·la, pene in exfirminium ac desolationem versa est: sola selet plangens no dolens, quod non modo extranei, sed nee sui ventris filii cognoverunt eam. Sie sin pere- PART IL and poverty national rature. CHAP. III Traversari, Guarino, and Valla. From such scanty records as remain of his impressions we might conclude that the Roman Retiness poet on the shores of the Euxine found a scarcely less congenial atmosphere'. If indeed all that the fifteenth century produced in England were subtracted from our libraries, the loss would seem singularly small, and the muses, like the princess in the enchanted castle, might be held but to have slumbered for a hundred years. Whatever still survives to represent the national genius, is chiefly imitative in its character, derived from writers like Bocaccio and the French romancers, who though they might quicken the fancy did little to develope and strengthen the more masculine powers, and, in the opinion of Roger Ascham, were praised by those who sought. to divert their countrymen from that more solid reading which, while it developed habits of observation and reflexion, could scarcely fail at the same time to direct the attention to the necessity for ecclesiastical reform3. The few original authors of this period, such as Capgrave, Lydgate, Pecock, and Occleve, secm but pale and ineffectual luminaries in the prevailing darkness. Learning in England,' says Hallam, 'was like seed fermenting in the ground through the fifteenth century. Not surely a very happy simile: for the rich sheaves. that were afterwards to enter our own ports, were the fruit of seed sown in other lands. But before we permit our attention to be drawn away to events pregnant with very momentous changes, it will be well to follow up the course of external developement at Cambridge, and also to complete our survey of those institutions which may be regarded as taking their rise still in implicit accord with those theories of education which were shortly to undergo such important modifications. It will be remembered that the papal decision in the CHAP year 1314 with reference to the privileges of the Mendicants RTL in the universities, was regarded by them as a great blow to their order, inasmuch as they were no longer permitted to receive the general body of students in their houses for lectures and disputations'. Up to the fourteenth century, it does not appear that either university was possessed of schools, in the sense of buildings expressly erected for the purpose; the rooms to which it was necessary to have recourse were those in the ordinary hostels'; and when larger assemblies were convened, St. Mary's church, or that of the Gray Friars, supplied the required accommodation'. Under these circumstances the imposing dwellings of the different religious orders had given them an advantage of which they were not slow to avail themselves in their policy of proselytist and self-aggrandisement. At Oxford, in the thirteenth century, the faculty of theology had been indebted to the Augustinian canons for a local habitation, and even in the fifteenth century the university had been fain to take on hire rooms which 1 See pp. 262-3. 'The great schools in the school street of Cambridge are mentioned in a lease from John de Crachal, chancellor of the university, and the assembly of the masters regent and non-regent, to Master William de Alderford, priest, M.A. dated 15th February, 20 Edw. III. [1346-7]. Cooper, Memorials, 111 59. It has even been asser.ed (Huber, 1 168), that masters of arts were in the habit of assembling their pupils in the porches of houses, but the inference of such a custom from the term in parvisio, from parvis Fr. from paradisus, a medieval word denoting a church porch,' cannot be sustained. In my opinion,' says Wood, the true meaning comes from those inferior disputations that are performed by the juniors, namely "generalls, which to this day are called and written disputationes in parcisis. For in the morning were Buciently, as now, the answering of quodlibets, that is the proposing of questions in philosophy and other arts by certain masters to him or them that intend to commence master of arts, and such as are called thy The use of St. Mary's Church PART IL Vartages in CHAP. IIL the rich abbey of Oseney had erected with the express purpose of letting them for such uses. It was not until the year 1480 that the divinity schools were opened; and then only by assistance begged from every quarter, and after the lapse of many years from the time of their foundation. In striking contrast to this deficiency in the resources of the university were to be seen the dwellings of the Mendicants; remarkable not merely for their size and extent but for the Reload. beauty of their details. We know from a contemporary thepet poet how the whole effect must have been calculated to overpess! lhy o awe and attract the youthful student; how the curiously wrought windows, where gleamed the arms of innumerable benefactors, the pillars, gilded and painted, and carved in curious knots, the ample precincts with private posterns, enclosed orchards and arbours', must have fascinated many a poor lad whose home was represented by the joint occupancy of some obscure garret, and who often depended on public charity for his very subsistence; and we can well understand the chagrin of the Mendicants at finding themselves prohibited from reaping the advantage which such opulence and splendour placed within their reach. With the fourteenth century, however, the universities began to seek for a more effectual remedy than was afforded by mere prohibitory meaFretion of Sures. In the latter part of the century Sir Robert de Thorpe, lord chancellor of England, and sometime master of 154 Pembroke, had commenced the erection of the divinity schools', which was carried to completion by the executors of his Erection of brother, Sir William de Thorpe, about the year 1398. But the grand effort was not made until the latter half of the hols, cire following century, when Lawrence Booth, the chancellor, the Divinity Mchools at Cambridge, the Arts Cvil law 145 resolved on raising a fund for the building of arts schools and schools for the civil law. Contributions were accordingly levied wherever there appeared a chance of success: on those who hired chairs as teachers of either the canon or 1 Creed of Piers Ploughman, ed. Wright, 11 460, 461. Cooper, Annals, 1 111. It is to be cbserved that the use of the plural does not imply more than one lecture room. Toujours le pluriel,' observes Thurot, même pour designer une salle unique,' 3 Ibid. 1 143. |