OXFORD UNIVERSITY. The origin of the University of Oxford is unknown. It has been said by many of our elder writers that it was founded by Alfred the Great. This statement is now generally admitted to be fabulous, but it appears certain that Oxford was a place of study In the reign of Edward the Confessor, if not earlier.
The first places of education in Oxford appear to have been schools for the instruction of youth. These schools were either claustral, that is, appendages to convents and other religious houses ; or secular, inch as were kept by, or hired and rented of, the inhabitants of Oxford. When many of these secular scholars resided in one house, it got the name of Ilall or Hostel (terms which are not let out of r- ed governors or principals were appointed to superintend the u. „sine and the affair, of the house. It is difficult to discover any tree of a regular plan of education In Oxford before the foundation of the- first college by Walter de Merton. The statutes of this founder for his college are well digested : and they have been adapted with little alteration to succeeding times in other colleges as well as his. In the reign of Stephen, Vacarius, a Lombard by birth, established a school of Roman law at Oxford. In the time of Henry Ill., we are told by Wood In his 'Annals' (vol. L p. 206) that the number of students amounted to 30,000; and even when Merton college was founded, they are said to bare amounted to 15,000. (Gui. Rishanger, in Chron. ono manuscript Bibl. Cott, Claud., D. vi., quoted by Wood, rat supra, p. 2130.) These numbers are evidently great exaggerations, but there is no doubt that the Uoiversity was then frequented by a great number of students, and many foreigners resorted to it from Paris and other places.
The earliest charter of privileges to the University of Oxford as a corporate body is of the 24th lieu. III. (Pat. 29 Hen. IIL in. 6, Libertates concuss) Cancellario Universitatis Oxon.') It was fol lowed by numerous other charters, some of fresh privileges, and others of general confirmation of the privileges formerly granted. The regu
lation of the assists of bread and beer, and the supervision of weights and meesuree, were granted to the chancellor of the university by Pat. 82 Edw. III., m. 5.
The same jealousy of the authority of the University which existed in early times among the townsmen of Cambridge, prevailed at Oxford also. The quarrels between the scholars and the townsmen often broke out into open violence, sometimes accompanied with bloodshed. Matthew Paris makes mention of these riots as early as 1240. On several occasions the scholars quitted the University for a time. At one period they retired to Northampton, at another to Stamford. The most serious riot on record was ou the day of St. Scholastics the Virgin, February 10th, 1354-55, when many lives were lost. Grosteste, Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese the University then was, placed the townsmen under an interdict, from which he released them in 1357, upon condition that the commonalty of Oxford, every year after, should celebrate an aunivcrsary on St. Scholastica's day, in St. Mary's church, for the souls of the clerks and others killed in the conflict; and that the mayor for the time being, the two bailiffs, and three score of the chiefest burghers, should personally appear on the said day in St. Mary's church at mass, and offer at the great altar a penny each. The mayor and commonalty at the same time gave a bond to pay a hundred marks yearly to the University, as a compensation for the great losses occasioned by the fray ; but the bond was not to be enforced so long as the mayor and 62 burghers came yearly and per formed the penance. The penance was mitigated in the reign of Elizabeth, and still more subsequently, but the citizens were not wholly absolved from it till 1925, when the University seal was affixed to an instrument which entirely released them from its observance.