He, indeed, was an
important officer. For health's sake he must have a
month's holiday during the long vacation. As it was
absurd for him to have fewer perquisites than those below
him in station, every beneficed graduate, at graduation, was
required to give him robes.[2] The finicking character of
these regulations suggests that the University statute-
maker had as great a dislike for "understandings" as
Dr. Newman.
[1] Mun. Acad., 265.
[2] Ibid,, 261 et seq.
Thus was established firmly, in the early years of the
fifteenth century, a University Library, an important resort
of students; the proper place, as the common rendezvous
of members of the University, for publishing the Lollard
doctrines condemned at London in 1411. No town in
England was better supplied with libraries than Oxford,
for besides the collections of the University, the monastic
colleges and the convents, libraries were already formed at
Merton, University, Oriel and New Colleges. Such progress
in providing scholars' armouries is remarkable, the greater
part of it being accomplished during a period of great
social and religious unrest--not the unrest of a wind-fretted
surface, but of a grim and far-sweeping underswell--a
period when pestilence, violent tempests and earthquakes,
seemed bodeful of Divine displeasure; not a time surely
when the studious life would be attractive, or when much
care would be taken to establish libraries, unless indeed
controversy made recourse to books more necessary or the
signs of the times gave birth to a greater number of
benefactors.
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