Other forms of education were also available. An apprentice was chosen between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, and entered a formal bond by which he agreed to spend between seven and ten years with his master while learning the ‘secrets’ of his chosen trade. It was by far the most common way of fully entering the adult world, although of course it had its risks. It was not unknown for masters to treat apprentices very roughly, or for apprentices to absent themselves without leave. Apprentices also had a reputation for being unruly and even violent; one of their favourite games, when they found themselves in a group, was known as ‘breaking doors with our heads’.
By the middle of the twelfth century Oxford had become well known as a seat of learning and of scholarship. At the very beginning of that century Theobald of Etampes was calling himself ‘magister Oxenefordiae’. It was the one place in England ‘where the clergy had flourished most’, according to Gerald of Wales who in 1187 gave a public dissertation there on the topography of Ireland. By that date more than twenty teachers of arts, and ten teachers of canon law and theology, are listed; it was reported in 1192 that the town was so filled with clerks that the authorities of Oxford did not know how to support them. A deed for the transference of property in Cat Street, around 1200, attests the presence of a bookbinder, a scrivener, three illuminators and two parchment-makers; so the ancillary trades of learning were already in large supply.
Yet it was crime, rather than scholarship, that effectively formed the university. In 1209 a student killed a woman of the town and then fled. In retaliation the authorities of Oxford arrested the student’s room companions and hanged them. All the teachers and students of Oxford left the schools, in disgust, and dispersed to other places of learning. A substantial number of them migrated to Cambridge, where the second English university was then established.
When the teachers of Oxford were persuaded to return in 1214 they insisted upon an official document to regulate the relationships between what at a later date would be called town and gown. That document, expressing the intention of electing a chancellor, became the source of the university’s corporate authority. Cambridge followed the same principle as Oxford and its first chancellor is recorded in 1225. Scholastic communities also existed at Northampton and Salisbury, but eventually they withered on the vine; otherwise those two old towns might also have hosted great universities.
The universities had no public buildings, and the lectures were delivered in churches or in rooms hired for the purpose. The students lived in lodgings and inns. A Master of Arts could hire a large tenement, and advertise for scholars; he had created a ‘hall’ in which his pupils would live and learn. Tackley Inn, Ing Hall, Lyon Hall, White Hall and Cuthbert Hall were premises in which grammar was taught. Each of the halls specialized in a particular discipline or set of disciplines, but they were essentially unregulated. They could be riotous.
The colleges of Oxford were first erected for the poorer students. Balliol College, for example, was endowed as a home for poor scholars by 1266. The founders of the colleges were the most prominent ecclesiastics and nobles, particularly of royal blood; it was considered to be a religious duty, and the members of the college were pledged to sing innumerable Masses for the souls of their patrons. The fundamental intent of the college was to create learned clergy, and it was thus an adjunct of the Church in every sense. The fellows of Queen’s College in Oxford wore purple robes as a memorial to the spilled blood of Christ. Teachers very gradually moved to the more regularized life of these institutions, which by the fifteenth century had become individual houses of learning.
The students themselves were classified as ‘northern’ or ‘southern’, with the river Nene (it rises in Northamptonshire, and runs for 3 miles (4.8 kilometres) between Cambridgeshire and Norfolk) being nominated as the boundary; the northern and southern contingents were often fiercely tribal, and the most trivial incident in a tavern or lodging house could provoke mass attacks one upon the other. Even the masters participated. A serious confrontation between southern and northern masters at Cambridge, in 1290, led to a general migration to the school of Northampton. The country was still in a sense divided into ancient kingdoms.
In 1389 some Oxford scholars from northern England fell upon their Welsh counterparts, shooting at them in the lanes and streets of the town; they called out ‘War, war, slay, slay, slay the Welsh dogs and their whelps.’ They killed some, and wounded others; then they dragged the rest to the gates. Before they ejected them they pissed on them and forced them ‘to kiss the place on which they had pissed’. The chronicler adds that ‘while the said Welshmen stooped to kiss it, they would knock their heads against the gates in an inhuman manner’.
Violent struggles also took place between the students and the townspeople. A skirmish at Swyndlestock Tavern, in the centre of Oxford, led to a bloody affray in 1354. The landlord’s friends rang the bell of the church of St Martin, the signal to alert the people of the town. A crowd gathered and assaulted the scholars with various weapons, whereupon the chancellor of the university rang the rival bell of the university church of St Mary. The scholars, alerted, seized their bows and arrows; a pitched battle between the two factions lasted until night fell. On the following day the townspeople sent eighty armed men into the parish of St Giles, where many of the scholars lodged; they shot and killed some of them, when once again the university bell was rung and a large assembly of Oxford pupils set upon the townspeople with their bows and arrows. But they were outnumbered. 2,000 people of the town advanced behind a black flag, crying out ‘Slay! Slay!’ or ‘Havoc! Havoc!’ or ‘Smite hard, give good knocks!’ These were the war cries of the medieval period. A general carnage ensued, with many deaths. All the scholars of Oxford seem to have fled, leaving the university empty for a while.
Less violent diversions can also be cited. An inspection of the pupils of Magdalen College, Oxford, in the very early years of the sixteenth century, revealed that ‘Stokes was unchaste with the wife of a tailor … Stokysley baptised a cat and practised witchcraft … Gregory climbed the great gate by the tower and brought a Stranger into College … Pots and cups are very seldom washed but are kept in such a dirty state that one shudders to drink out of them … Kyftyll played cards with the butler at Christmas time for money.’ Other students were accused of keeping as pets a ferret, a sparrow-hawk and a weasel.
It is perhaps not surprising that, in a society of very young men, casual and sporadic violence was common. The students entered the university at an age between fourteen and seventeen, where they embarked upon a course of study that lasted for seven years. Grammar, rhetoric and dialectic were taught in the first three years; these disciplines were followed by arithmetic, astronomy, music and geometry. The students attended lectures and tutorials, but they also disputed among themselves in formal debates. Disputation was an important aspect of medieval life in every sphere. The examinations themselves were entirely oral and were prolonged for four days. The successful candidate would then be given the title of Master of Arts. The more learned moved on to the study of theology; that pursuit took another sixteen or seventeen years, more or less consigning its devotees to an academic life.
The learning promulgated in Oxford and Cambridge was not all of a scholastic kind. More informal schools, established in the two towns to take advantage of their general reputation, taught lessons in conveyancing, accountancy and commercial law; these were frequented by the sons of the greater farmers and landowners, and by the administrators of such estates, to keep abreast of the ever more complex world of property ownership and property speculation. A great enthusiasm for knowledge of a practical nature can be observed in this period.