Note 340 — Chapter IV · COLLEGIATE AND SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY

Colleges were not at first built for the ‘undergraduate.’ The scholar of the xiii, xiv, and xv centuries was the socius (fellow) of to-day. His clerical position was that of a young man in minor orders, his scholastic that of a bachelor in art. He attended the schools of the doctors and masters, and was assisted by his fellowship and by exhibitions in the learned faculties to study for the degrees (master of art, and doctor in the faculties). The pensioner, who might or might not be an undergraduate in standing and who lived at his own charges, was provided for in the hostel. It was not till the visitation of 1401 that we find socii and scholares distinguished; and when King’s College was founded in the same half century its scholars were young students and nothing else. Nevertheless, although such was the original conception of the endowed college—at Peterhouse, Michaelhouse, Pembroke, Corpus—the later developments were outlined from the first. The bible clerks at Peterhouse were poor students not of the standing of bachelors, and a proviso in the statutes enabled the college to maintain “2 or 3 indigent scholars well grounded in grammar” when its funds shall permit. At Clare (1359) the sizar was regularly recognised. At Pembroke (1347) there were in addition to the “major scholars” 6 “minor scholars” who might fit themselves to be major scholars. At King’s Hall (Statutes Ric. II.) boys from 14 years old were admitted. At Christ’s (1505) the standing of the scholar was defined by requiring him to give instruction in sophistry; but the pensioner was contemplated for the first time as a regular inmate of the college. In fact the perendinant who ate at the college tables became, before the middle of the xv c., the commensalis; the class being fully recognised 50 years later in the convivae of Christ’s. There were no fewer than 778 convivae or pensioners in the colleges in the time of Caius 1574.

As to the age at which youths went up, it was not until the xix c. that the university was finally regarded as the complement to a full ‘college’ (public school) course elsewhere. The grammar boys at Clare and Peterhouse, the richer youths at King’s Hall, and the glomery students, must always have kept Cambridge peopled with little lads: but when grammar disappeared altogether (in the xvi c.) from the university curriculum, scholars continued to go up very young. In the xvi c. Wyatt went to S. John’s at 12, Bacon and his elder brother to Trinity at 12 and 14; Spenser was in his 16th year. In the xvii c. George Herbert was 15, so was Andrew Marvell, Milton had not attained his 15th year; Newton went to Trinity at 17, and Herschell to S. John’s at the same age. Pitt was a precocious exception in the xviii c. at 14.

All the scholars of the early colleges were to be indigent; the one exception was King’s Hall, but the proviso appears again in the statutes for King’s College.

We may note that All Souls’ Oxford retains the characteristic of the ancient college foundations, in being a college of fellows only. The title “students” for the fellows of Christchurch recalls the same intention.