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The Social Relations of Tudor Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

J. K. McConica
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Extract

If study of the university can have any place in the general history of society, it must be understood as a part of a much larger historical phenomenon, of whose vastness and complexity the university's records themselves make us aware. In the sixteenth century we are conscious of powerful currents of social change and energy upon which the universities floated with little or no power of control: a rapidly growing population, geographically and economically on the move; a burgeoning school system; urban wealth growing and changing location, but always under the massive dominance of London; an active land-market; rise in prices; and the work of governments, both national and local, concerned with education and its consequences. This is the setting of Tudor society, and only special optical devices will enable us to pick out the university and set it in the foreground. In the process some distortion is inevitable. An indication of the problems that occur in university history may be found in the view of a recent student of Tudor Cambridge who, while acknowledging that one contribution of the universities to the complex change within English society was ‘the creation of a more refined and integrated cultural and intellectual milieu’ centred upon London and the court, finds the truly significant contribution in a more informed, vigorous and tenacious local solidarity in the ‘country’. Another historian of Elizabethan England tells us that in the universities, ‘the interesting thing, as so often in English life, is the extent and intimacy of the social mixture’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 1977 , pp. 115 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1977

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References

1 Morgan, Victor, ‘Cambridge University and “The Country” 1560–1640’ in Stone, Lawrence (ed.), The University in Society, i (Princeton, 1974), p. 184Google Scholar.

2 Rowse, A. L., The England of Elizabeth (New York, 1951), p. 521Google Scholar.

3 In a paper given at the Conference.

4 I have reviewed bibliography on this question in ‘The Prosopography of the Tudor University’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, iii:3 (Winter, 1973), pp. 543–54Google Scholar.

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6 In his as yet unpublished contribution to volume three of the official history of the University of Oxford.

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8 There were only eight B.G.L.'s in the same period; cf. Mullinger, , op. cit., p. 132Google Scholar. On the doubtful side of Smith's service to the study in Cambridge see Dewar, Mary, Sir homas Smith (London, 1964), p. 21Google Scholar. Haddon's Oratio quam habuit cum Cantabrigiae legum interpretatianem ordiretur deplores the decline in the study since Smith's depature: ‘… sic excellentissimum hoc studium iuris civilis, quod sincerissimum esse debuit, & quondam sane fuit, nunc contaminatum & oblitum est peregrinitate verborum & rerum, ut Iustinianus ipse si revivisceret, novum incendium inter hos iuris perturbatores excitaturus sit.’ See G. Haddoni … lucubratimes passim collectae, & editae (London, 1567), pp. 78–79Google Scholar [incorrectly numbered in reverse order in pagination in Huntington Library copy].

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11 B.L. Add. MS. 28, 571 4v–5v; printed by James, A Muller in The Letters of Stephen Gardiner (Cambridge, 1933) Appendix 3, p. 493Google Scholar.

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13 But not entirely: at least five were granted in the reign of Mary Tudor; cf. Boase, , op. cit., pp. 227–28Google Scholar.

14 John Barton, to whom I owe this information, presents an analysis of careers; cf. n. 6 above.

15 Foster, J., The Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn, 1521–1889 … (London, 1889)Google Scholar; William Fulbeck's name appears under 25 November 1584 as of Staple Inn, p. 66 (fo 65).

16 S.T.C. 11410.

17 S.T.C. 11414.

18 S.T.C. 11415, 11415a.

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20 I owe this information to Rev Dr Stanley Greenslade, preparing a study of the Faculty for the history of th e University; cf. n. 6.

21 Dr R. G. Lewis, St Anne's College, Oxford, is preparing a n account of the Faculty for the history of Oxford, volume 3; cf. n. 6.

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23 Boase, , op. cit., p. 171 ‘Herteis’Google Scholar; cf. Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford A.D. 1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), p. 282Google Scholar. Another perspective on the relative importance of the higher faculties may be gained from the Register of an Arts college with a medical tradition. At Merton College in mid-century, of the 141 fellows found in the Register from 1521 to 1567, four later took degrees in civil law, one of them a doctorate; sixteen took the B.M. and a licence to practice, of whom nine later took the doctorate in medicine; and twenty-eight took the B.D., of whom ten later took the D.D. Forty-eight, or 34% of the total number in this select group took degrees in the higher faculties. See Fletcher, J. M. (ed.), Registrum annalium collegii Mertonensis 1521–1567, Oxford Historical Society, new ser., 23 Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar.

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29 Op. cit., pp. 18–19.

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34 Ibid., p. 4.

35 Ibid., p. 6.

36 Ibid., p. 6.

37 Ibid., p. 12; notice his account of Mulcaster's presentation of plays at court to teach the boys ‘good behaviour and audacitye’.

38 Ibid., p. 12.

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40 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

41 Ibid., p. 15.

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46 The general aim of this study is described in the article cited in n. 4 above. I would like here to acknowledge the indispensable work of my collaborator Mr Kenneth Powell in assembling details of biographical information about the members of Tudor Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the generous financial support of the Canada Council.

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50 J. H. Hexter noted the exception for those planning careers in the Church, and adds, ‘By the third quarter of the sixteenth century the squirarchyhas elbowed its way into Oxford in force.’ ‘The Education of the Aristocracy in the Renaissance’, Journal of Modern History, xxii (1950), pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

51 Among men at Corpus who were born before 1525 one might mention as examples, Leonard Arden, William Boughton, Kenelm Deane, Thomas Ogle, Richard Pates, Clement Perrot, Christopher Roper, John Standish and William Wye.

52 The will is dated 8 September 1555, proved 2 December 1556, P.C.C. 25 Ketchyn.

53 Bloxam, J. R., A Register of the Presidents, Fellows … and other Members of Saint Mary Magdalen College in the University of Oxford, ii (Oxford, 1857), pp. 182–84Google Scholar.

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55 ‘Change in the Provinces: the Seventeenth Century’, Occasional Papers, 2nd ser, no. I (Leicester, 1969), p. 45Google Scholar.

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