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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
In accounts of the medieval constitution of the University of Cambridge insufficient attention is paid to the gradual decrease of the Chancellor's authority and the concomitant increase of powers of the regent masters. This development very clearly reflects the growing awareness of the University of itself as an autonomous institution, that is, a body with its own inherent rights and within which the supreme jurisdictional power resided. Although the premisses and presuppositions are different, this development might well show some kinship with contemporary developments elsewhere, namely in the institutional growth of Parliament and in the conciliarist form of church government. This rather important evolution of the University constitution has not yet been properly appreciated, mainly because the individual statutory enactments by which the gradual transfer of authority from the (ecclesiastical) Chancellor to the whole University took place had not been known. What was known was one Statute, through which alone the stages of the development could not, of course, be recognized. Moreover, when touching upon this point, G. Peacock and C. H. Cooper relied on a Statute which substantially differs in its wording and in its subject-matter from that printed by the Commissioners in 1852, on which J. B. Mullinger, Sir Stanley Leathes and Dean Rashdall drew. Fortunately, the Statute in its original form has been preserved as an original document in the Archives of the University of Cambridge, and it enables us to trace, at least in rough outline, this process of displacement of authority which ended in the control by the regent masters (through their proctors) over the chancellor and vice-chancellor. As far as can be established, there was no corresponding development at the University of Oxford.
1 Peacock, G., Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge (1841), 23Google Scholar; Cooper, C. H., Annals of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1842), I, 55.Google Scholar
2 Statuta Antiqua in Documents relating to the University and Colleges of Cambridge (ed. by the Queen's Commissioners (1852), I, 305 ff., at p. 342: stat. 57; Mullinger, J. B., The University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1873), 1, 143Google Scholar; Grace Book A (ed. Sir S. Leathes, in Luard Memorial Series I, Cambridge, 1897), p. xxxivGoogle Scholar; Rashdall, H., The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, Oxford, 1936), III, 286.Google Scholar
3 Statuta antique, stat. 54, p. 340: ‘Tempora et modus legendi et disputandi, exequias celebrandi et incipiendi et feriarum observantiae ad ipsos procuratores pertineant; in trans–gressores contra praedicta et in bedellos si mandatis eorum non paruerint, coercione concessa eisdem animadversione gravissima per cancellarium et magistros, si opus fuerit, nihilominus irroganda.’ It is clear from this enactment that the duties of the bedells as officers of the University were regulated before this Statute was passed. What is doubtful, however, is whether the whole stat. 54 was originally passed in the form in which it has come down to us: it, too, may have undergone an expansion similar to that of stat. 57 (see below p. 178). There does not seem to exist an Oxford enactment corresponding to the Cambridge one, according to which the bedells were under the authority of the proctors.
4 That the discipline at Cambridge about the middle of the thirteenth century left much to be desired was pointed out by Denifle, H. (Die Universitäten des Mittelalters, Berlin, 1885, I, 371), although the otherwise omniscient Dominican, in his attempt to denigrate Cambridge, paid no attention to the measures taken by the University itself to remedy this state of affairs.Google Scholar
5 The same holds good for Oxford, see Strickland, Gibson, Statuta antiqua Universitatis Oxoniensis (Oxford, 1931), p. lxxi.Google Scholar
6 It is by no means certain what the masters meant by this expression; it may be either the whole University, in which case the term is singularly inadequate, because the usual designation was either stadium or universitas, or the town, which would correspond to the contemporary appellation of the municipality itself as a communitas. Heywood, J., Collection of documents for the University of Cambridge (1840), 103, translates the term communitas by ‘assembly of regents’; cf. also his Early Cambridge [University and College] Statutes (1855), 42, a translation which I hesitate to accept as correct. In both these instances Heywood relied on the Statute in its later, amended form.Google Scholar
7 On this point see H. Rashdall, op. cit., edn. cit., III, 58–9.
8 The right of the proctors to convoke the regents seems to have been conceded at Oxford much later, on 2 Dec. 1322 (see Statt. Antt. cit. pp. 123–4). But neither of the two cases corresponds to the Cambridge ones. One enactment (p. 123) concerns the case of the insufferable chancellor (intollerabilis cancellarius), when the regent house could take disciplinary measures against the Chancellor himself; and the other (p. 124) deals with dissensions amongst the regents through which pax et tranquillitas could be disturbed, when either the Chancellor or the proctors had the right to summon the regents.
9 Rashdall's doubt (op. cit., edn. cit., Ill, 289) can now be resolved.
10 Calendar of Papal Letters, ed. Bliss, W. H. & Twemlow, J. A. (1904), v, 370–1 (12 Jan. 1401).Google Scholar
11 That Boniface IX had every reason to show himself accommodating to the wishes of the Cambridge Masters is not surprising in view of the firm line which they had taken barely two years earlier in the matter of his recognition as the lawful pope. Cf. my ‘The University of Cambridge and the Great Schism’ in Journal of Theological Studies, IX (1958), 53ff.Google Scholar
12 For personal details of Markaunt, see Historical Register, ed. Tanner, J. R. (Cambridge, 1917), 35Google Scholar; J and Venn, J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922), I, 3, 140; he died on 19 Nov. 1439. By inference it is possible to fix his age when he was proctor in 1417: he was witness in the notorious Barnwell trial (12–20 Oct. 1430) when he was ‘aged 48 and more’ (see Heywood, Early Cambridge Statutes, 195, where the whole proceedings are translated into English). Hence he was no more than 33 when proctor and 55 when he died. The surmise of Leathes (op. cit. p. xxxv) that the proctors must have been rather young is at least partly borne out in this instance. But there is really no prima facie evidence of an internal or external character to justify the ascription of this book to Thomas Markaunt. It is a paper volume of 81 folios, compiled without regard to chronology or subject-matter; for instance, our Statute in its original form (fo. Iov) is preceded by the agreement between the University and the rector of St Benedict's of 22 March 1273, concerning the ringing of the bells for lectures; it is succeeded by a writ of Richard II of 30 Jan. 1392 relating to the freeing of offenders imprisoned by order of the Chancellor. What would in fact militate against ascribing the book to Markaunt is that material subsequent to his death was entered, e.g. the letter of Nicholas V (fo. 31) to the bishop of Norwich, in 1450. The indefatigable sixteenth-century antiquarian Robert Hare transcribed from Markaunt (see Cambridge University Archives, Hare MSS. I, 28 v), and Cooper and Peacock took the Statute from Hare.Google Scholar
13 The books carried are actually the 1785 edition of the Statuta Academiae Cantabrigiensis: stat. 57 is at p. 29.
14 The usual opinion that Cambridge followed Oxford closely in constitutional matters, would seem to be in need of revision. Cf. e.g. Denifle, op. cit. 1, 251: ‘Man war bisher gewohnt, Oxford und Cambridge unter einem Gesichtspunkte zu betrachten. Es geht dies an, wenn man die Verfassung beider Schulen vergleicht’; cf. Rashdall's statement (op. cit. m, 285):’The organisation of the University of Cambridge is so completely framed on the Oxford model that it will be enough to specify a few points’ in which the constitutions differ.
15 Long ago Denifle, op. cit. p. xxvi, pointed out that the history of the Chancellor's office in medieval universities needed to be written.
16 Cf. G. Peacock, op. cit. 19: ‘He constituted a distinct estate in the academical commonwealth.’