Volume 2

Register of the University of Oxford.

Date:
1885-1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Register of the University of Oxford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/506 (page 4)
    University, had they been preserved. In most cases the earlier volumes have been destroyed ; the Lincoln College Buttery-books, e. g. do not begin till 1670. Besides, where they do exist, they have never been really searched, partly for want of such an index of names as the present volume and its suc- cessors will supply. (In many cases only the surnames are given, and no one who has not actually made the attempt to arrange a series of such entries can estimate the difficulties arising from this brevity.) In some colleges there were also ‘admission-books’ for the separate regis- tration of students’ or at least of fellows’ and scholars’ admissions. I have examined many of these college admission-books and registers, and I hope to obtain leave to catalogue them, if not also to edit their earlier portions m a subsequent volume of this register. They form an indispensable supplement to the University registers. It has further to be noted that many students resident in the precincts of the University carefully avoided entering a college or hall (because that in- volved profession of assent to the Royal Supremacy and the Thirty-nine Articles), so that their names nowhere appear. From these several causes I am convinced that no complete list of mem- bers of the University can be constructed till about 1670. Once entered at a hall or college, the student was not allowed to change without leave. A glance, however, at the degree lists will show that leave was freely given and that men often changed from one college or hall to another. For example—John Raynolds (elected President of Corpus in 1598) states in his Will (GG. 291 b.), that he had either abode as a student or had some part of his education in Queen s, Merton, New College, University, and Oriel. (2) Choice of a Tutor. On his admission to college, the student chose (or was assigned to) a < tutor ’ (not necessarily of his own college, at this time), who was to conduct his studies and be responsible for his conduct while he was ‘ in statu pupillari.’ It was no doubt the system during this period that the tutor should take the pupil through the whole course for his degree, beginning with grammar and ending with the two philosophies, natural and moral. That was the oldest University system of all, but it had ceased to exist in Oxford in its purity even by the time of Elizabeth. The best historic1 instance of it is found in the Universities of Scotland, where the ‘Professors’ now teaching in specific subjects to the whole num- ber of students in their subject are the representatives of ‘Regents, each of whom lectured in all the subjects of the curriculum to a definite number of students specially assigned to him. . . . . At Oxford this system had partially broken down. The University lecturers (taking them for what they were worth) were deputed to lecture in specific 1 A similar system, I believe, still survives or lately survived in school-work in Scotland At the Edinburgh Academy a master takes (or at least did till lecently) ! form of boys entering the school in a given year, and travels with it m succeeding year^through the work of the successive forms till the form leaves the school.