Note 218 — Chapter II · THE COLLEGES (continued 2)

i. p. 27. The university for English and Irish monks provided by papal authority and by the Cistercian Constitutions was Oxford. The licence for Monks’ hostel Cambridge stipulates that all monks of the order of S. Benedict in England or in other the king’s dominions shall henceforth dwell there together during the university course. There was a small recrudescence of monastic studies in Cambridge in the xiv c. when Ely hostel was built, and from this time forward 3 or 4 Ely monks were regularly to be found pursuing the university course there (Testimony of John of Sudbury, prior of students, at the Northampton chapter in 1426). But there was no prior of students at Cambridge till towards the end of that century; Ely hostel itself was dismantled before the middle of the century; the black monks of Norwich however came to Cambridge under Bateman’s influence with what the bull of Sixtus IV. 150 years later shows to have been considerable constancy. See Caius pp. 143-4, 144 n.