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.

    39/506 (page 5)
    S subjects ; and the colleges were beginning to have lecturers in Greek, in Grammar, in Logic. But the tutor, using these as subsidiaries, carried his pupil through every subject in the course. It is easy to see the faults of this system, in the loss which a student would receive along the whole line who had been assigned to an incompetent or idle tutor. But, on the other hand, in the case of capable tutors it secured a unity and proportion in the curriculum which on any other system is un- attainable. The old system still nominally survives in the University. The student when he enters a college is consigned to the charge of a tutor, who remains responsible for him till the end of his course ; but the teaching is no longer undertaken by the tutor, who may or may not lecture in the subject the student is to study. Many men, indeed, complete their course without re- ceiving any instruction, formal or informal, from their nominal tutor. It may be noted that in some years in the Matriculation Registers of the University the name of the student’s tutor is given. See e. g. the Matriculations at Trinity College in 1572 and 1574 (in Part ii. pp. 55, 56) and at Lincoln College in 1575 (?) (in Part ii. p. 66). II. Entrance to the University. In the course of each week one of the Bedells of the University came round to the colleges and halls, inspected the buttery-books, and made a note of the names which had been entered since his last visit. These newly-arrived students were then instructed to appear before the Vice- Chancellor (at his lodgings in Vacation, in S. Mary’s during Term) for formal admission to the University. This visit to the Vice-Chancellor took place almost invariably on a Friday \ and generally on the second Friday after the student’s arrival in Oxford. The student ought statutably to be presented to the Vice-Chancellor by the Head of his college or hall, but this duty, like his other duties, a Head generally left to be discharged by a deputy. Two ceremonies were then and there gone through—(1) Subscription, (2) Matriculation. (1) Subscription2. The student declared by the usual oath on the Gospels that he assented to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Royal Supremacy. In testimony of this assent the student wrote his name in the MS. pages bound up with a copy of the Thirty-nine Articles. The successive books in which this was done are fortunately preserved in the University in thevtlf 5fam^ed ^he Siven dates of matriculation for several years, and found that n 2^,vast majority of cases they fall on a Friday. nominall^in^?11/ w^s not enforced till the year 1581 ; matriculation had then been nominally m existence for fifteen, and really for about nine years.