Note 330 — Chapter IV · COLLEGIATE AND SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY

The first esquire or armiger bedell on the Cambridge register is Physwick in the xiv c.; no one else is entered for this office till 1498 when Philip Morgan held it. After him there is another esquire bedell in 1500. The yeoman bedell probably stood in the same relation to the esquire bedell as the trumpeter to the herald. The herald did not blow his own trumpet and the esquire bedell of the university was doubtless not a macebearer. The original two bedells, nevertheless, used to go before the chancellor and masters virgam deferentes; and Balsham in 1275 arranges that the bedell of the master of glomery shall not carry his stave on these occasions, but only when on his superior’s own business. A bedell is mentioned in the xiii c. hostel statute referred to on p. 51.