16

EXPELS ALL OTHERS.

and new favourites. Emo and Addo 'took up' civil law. The Mathematical Faculty has calculated that there are now four thousand different ways of achieving that degree which entitles the possessor to teach mankind as Master. These brothers had a more restricted choice of books. After hearing lectures they copied out their notes and made extracts from the Decretum and the Liber Pauperum, Addo during the former part of the night, Emo during the latter-an arrangement which, as Prof. Holland observes, had the advantage of making one truckle-bed suffice for both. Ten years earlier Daniel of Morley, in Norfolk, after studying in Paris and Toledo, returned with 'a priceless multitude of books,' but was chagrined to find Aristotle and Plato superseded by Titius and Seius, the John Doe and Richard Roe of Roman law. However, not to remain the only Grecian among Romans, he halted at Oxford to pick up the fashionable science. Giraldus too, though he calls Oxford the place where the English clergy most excelled in clerkly lore, complains of the desertion of bonae litterae '' The haste with which the legists leapt from a rapid study of the Institutes to the Digests and the Code was also deplored by many. Roger Bacon declared that the Civil Law corrupted the study of philosophy. It was said that the Sibylline prophecy, 'venient dies, et vae illis, in quibus leges obliterabunt scientiam litterarum,' was being fulfilled. A clerk named Martin, who had himself studied law at Bologna, loudly reproved the Masters assembled in public, in that 'the Imperial laws had choked every other science;' again, the Archbishop on a public occasion blundering in his Latin, the same 'merry blade' stopped the hum that went round by crying, 'Why do ye murmur? Grammar is out of date.' The civilians were indeed the spoiled children of Alma Mater. In 1268 'the inceptors in civil law were so numerous, and attended by such a number of guests, that the academical houses or hostels were not sufficient for their accommodation, and the company filled not only these, but even the refectory, cloisters, and many apartments of Oseney Abbey. At which time many Italians studying at Oxford were admitted in that faculty.' 'The study of law,' writes Mr. Green,' was the one source of promotion, whether in Church or State.' A century later the legists refused to be subjected to statutes

1 Wood says that there was then a threefold division of clerks into superseminati, ill-grounded and superficial, pannosi, patchy scholars, and massati,' who built an unshaken edifice upon the solid foundation of literature, as well of the divine as human law, and other faculties.' But owing to the discouragement of everything but jurisprudence the last class were 'very few and rare.'

LAW SCHOOL IN ST. ALDATE'S CHURCH.

17

made by artists' and theologists, though the claim of Bachelors of Civil Law and of the Decrees to be styled Master, and their appeal to the foreign court' of the Arches, were unsuccessful.

The law students were but slightly connected with the religious houses, though a knowledge of civil law had come to be an indispensable part of the training of a canonist, and 'divinity was reputed bare without it. Indeed the canon law tended everywhere but in Paris, where the theologists were strong, to become an appendage thereto. Still, as Bishop Kennet observes, 'it was then customary for the Religious to have schools that bore the name of their respective order;' and belonging to the Priory, round which—as the great church of the Patroness of Oxford-a multitude of inns had grown up, were the Schools of St. Frideswyde' in or near Schools Street, and 'Civil Law' or 'Great Civil Law School' in St. Edward's parish. The centre of the hostels for jurists outside the west gate of the Priory was a Law School in St. Aldate's Church. It is true that the interesting

I quote the following from Mr. Ruskin's description of Simone Memmi's frescoes in Santa Maria Novella (Mornings in Florence. The Strait Gate, p. 144). First of the Seven Heavenly Sciences is :

'I. CIVIL LAW. Civil, or "of citizens," not only as distinguished from Ecclesiastical, but from local law. She is the universal Justice of the peaceful relations of men throughout the world, therefore holds the globe, with its three quarters, white, as being justly governed, in her left hand.

She is also the law of eternal equity, not of erring statute; therefore holds her sword level across her breast.

She is the foundation of all other divine science. To know anything whatever about God you must begin by being Just.

Dressed in red, which in these frescoes is always a sign of power, or zeal; but her face very calm, gentle, and beautiful. Her hair bound close, and crowned by the royal circlet of gold, with pure thirteenth-century strawberry leaf ornament.

Under her, the Emperor Justinian, in blue, with conical mitre of white and gold; the face in profile, very beautiful. The imperial staff in his right hand, the Institutes in his left.

Medallion, a figure apparently in distress, appealing for justice. (Trajan's suppliant widow ?).

Technical points:-The three divisions of the globe in her hand were originally inscribed ASIA, AFRICA, EUROPE. The restorer has ingeniously changed AF into AME-RICA.

II. CHRISTIAN LAW. After the justice which rules men, comes that which rules the Church of Christ. The distinction is not between secular law and ecclesiastical authority, but between the rough equity of humanity, and the discriminate compassion of Christian discipline.

In full, straight-falling, golden robe, with white mantle over it; a church in her left hand; her right raised, with the forefinger lifted... Head-dress, a white veil floating into folds in the air...

Beneath, Pope Clement V, in red... Note the strict level of the book, and the vertical directness of the key.'

C

18

THE CHAPEL OF THE LEGISTS.

chamber afterwards used for this purpose and as a library of law books, over the south aisle, was a late Perpendicular erection. But it is most unlikely that a civil law school should be built in a parish church as late as Henry VII or Henry VIII', unless there had been one there before. Wood says that it was 'anciently' so used, being frequented by the students belonging to the Halls of Broadgate, Beef, Wolstan, Bole, Moyses, &c.' The numerous legists of this quarter had no other centre of teaching. Huber says (§ 69) that even in the fifteenth century the Masters assembled their forms in the porches of houses and churches, the conventual schools alone having good lecture rooms.

3

The chamber in St. Aldate's is described in the churchwardens' accounts, 26 Hen. VIII, as 'ye library,' being rented at 26s. 8d. p. ã.'s 'When the University was in a manner left desolate in the reign of K. Edw. VI. the said School went to ruin and the books were lost.' Church law-books were not likely to survive the other 'cobwebs' of medieval knowledge swept away by the Visitors. After the foundation of Pembroke the room was again furnished with books and was used as the College library until the year 1709, the College executing the repairs, as also of the chapel below. It was taken down by a resolution of the vestry in 1842 as 'dangerous,' being then rented by Mr. P. Walsh. The loss of this picturesque feature of the church is to be deplored.

But the Broadgates students, and after them the members of Pembroke, had also the use of the aisle itself for their devotions. Probably it was shared originally by the other hostels around.

It might, to judge by the prints, have been of the fifteenth century; but the unfeeling mutilation of the tops of the beautiful aisle windows by the floor points to a later date.

2 Like Chaucer's 'Sergeant of lawe, war and wys,

That often hadde ben atte parvys; '

or that 'parvise' where we have all been supposed to respond to the Masters of the Schools' questions.

3 Wood MS. D. 2, fol. 67.

Now that the library and school over the aisle of St. Aldate's has been destroyed, St. Mary's alone retains a similar chamber. In that church, over the old Congregation-house, a public library was begun to be built about 1320 by Bishop Cobham; but until 1409 the books were kept in the vaulted room below, locked up in chests or chained to desks. There is such a library of chained volumes over one of the aisles of Wimborne Minster, and also in All Hallows, Hereford, and in Hereford Cathedral. In St. Mary's the legists used St. Thomas's Chapel. When a great Congregation was holden, 'at the proclamation of the bedell for the faculties to receed or goe to their places, the non-Regents went in the Cancell, the Theologues in the Congregation house, the Decretists in St. Ann's Chapel, the Physitians in St. Catherin's, the Jurists in St. Thomases, and the Proctors with the Regents in Our Ladie's Chapel' (Wood's City, ii. 30).

DOCKLINTON'S AISLE.

19

In the Oxford Sausage there is an eighteenth-century epigram 'on Part of S. Mary's Church being converted into a law School.'

'See here an event that no mortal suspected;

See Law and Divinity closely connected!

Which proves the old proverb, long reckon'd so odd,
That "the nearest the Church the farthest from GOD."'

The aularians having no extra-diocesan privileges, the principal of every hall and his scholars were obliged by the University statutes to repair on solemn days to their parish church for Divine Service, though sometimes they had a private oratory'. The appropriation of an aisle of St. Aldate's to the scholars of Broadgates may perhaps lend some colour to Wood's assertion that the budding monks who first inhabited, as he asserts, the 'ancient hostle,' performed in the adjoining Church, of which the Priory were joint-patrons, those usuall rites and services that were required by their rule.' Leonard Hutten says: 'In this Church there is a Chappell of newer building than it selfe, but the Founder or Builder thereof I doe not find. It is peculier and propper to Broadgates where they daily meete for the celebration of Divine Service? It was the Chapel of Pembroke College till 1732, a rent being always paid of 6s. 8d.

6

The founder was John de Dokelynton, who also built the tower and steeple in the ninth of Edward III (1335, 6), and it was usually called by his name. Wood calls it 'Trinity Chapel and Doclinton's Chantry.' He says":

'John Doclinton or Ducklinton (he was a fishmonger, and white fishes in a red circular feild are in this chapple to this day) severall times maior of this city, desiring the health of his soule, did to the honor of the Virgin Mary and All Saints institute a perpetual chantry, 9 Edw. III, in a chappell of his own building on the south side of this church. Wherin ordaining a chapleyn to celebrate divine service for his and the soules of his wives, Sibyll and Julian, for the soules of his father and mother, and also of Henry bishop of Lyncoln, while living and when dead, setled on him and his successors for ever an annual revenew of 5 marks issuing out of severall of his messuages in Oxon, viz., out of that that he then inhabited in Fish Street, another in St. Michael's parish at North Gate, out of two shops in the parish of All Saints, out of another tenement near Soller Hall in St. Edward's parish, and out of another in Grandpont neare Trill Milne. This gift and institution (as also the license of the king and Alexander Medbourn, the then rector of this 1 The principal of Hinxsey Hall in St. Aldate's parish was licensed in 1485' ad celebrandum in oratorio' (Wood's City, ed. Clark, O. H. S., i. 201).

2 Antiquities of Oxford (Elizabethan Oxford, ed. Plummer, O. H. S., p. 88). 3 City, ii. 37.

20

JOHN DE DOCKLINTON.

church, for it) was confirmed by way of inspeximus by Henry Burwash, bishop of Lyncoln, the same year 16 calends of Aprill: and afterwards paid to St. Frideswyde's Priory 6d. per annum, as appears by one of their rentalls of all their revenews in Oxon for the year 1517 in which this chappell is stiled Trinity Chappell.'

As a fishmonger he naturally lived near his trade in Fish (St. Aldate's) Street. Wood elsewhere says that he owned Borstall Hall (in High Street) 'in the raignes of Edward II and III',' which his wife Sibyll granted in 1336 to William Sedbury of Worcester; and that in his will (1348) he bequeathed Soller Hall (in Bear Lane) to his wife Alice 2. This then was a third consort. Chaucer speaks of a Solar Hall at Cambridge. Wood inclines to identify Docklinton's Inn in Fish Street with the Christopher 3.

Docklinton's name is of frequent occurrence. About 1284 the priory demised to John de Doklindon and Juliana his wife a seld, rented at 125., in the parish of All Hallows (Ch. 398). In 1303 he was bailiff with John of Beverley. In 1312 he conveyed Hart Hall to Bishop Walter de Stapledon and also Arthur Hall. The former he had bought in 1301 from Elias de Herteford the younger for £20, the latter in 1308 of Agnes de Staunton. In 1318 he witnessed an agreement between the Abbess of Godstow and the Rector and Scholars of Stapledon Hall, and another in 1323 between Agatha Oweyn and the same; also two grants by Elena le Boun to Thomas le Macoun in 1315, a grant of John de Ew to John de Durham on the morrow of the Conception of the Virgin 1317, and a conveyance of Nicholas Bone to Thomas and Agnes le Mason in 1322. A grant from Thomas and Agnes to Nicholas, Feb. 6, 132, is witnessed by him as mayor. In 1335 he bequeathed 20s. to each of the four Orders in Oxford. While mayor in 1327, we find him taking part in an extraordinary riot on the part of the joint commonalties of Oxford and Abingdon, in which Abingdon Abbey was sacked and pillaged of its treasures and muniments. A number of rioters were hanged, but whether Docklinton was found guilty is not clear. In the 35th of Edw. I (1307) he witnessed the lease to Balliol College of the old Synagogue, afterwards one of the numerous Broadgates Halls, almost opposite the east end of Pennyfarthing, now Pembroke, Street. In 1341 Adam de Kemerton was instituted to a chantry in St. Aldate's, no doubt Docklinton's. Richard de Lelewood left a bequest in 1349 for the repair of the Lady Chapel, and John Shawe in 1361 for St. Peter's light ®.

Docklinton's Aisle, under part of which is a vaulted Norman crypt

1 City, i. 129.

He had a daughter

2 City, i. 174. Perhaps wife is a mistake for daughter. Alice who owned, 1356, a (Wood MS. D. 2, fol. 58). 3 City, i. 198.

hall and a shop annexed to it in St. Edward's parish She granted it to John de Norton.

5 Bodleian Charters, 287.

Oxford City Documents, ed. Rogers, O. H. S., p. 165. 6 Wood MS. D. 2, fol. 53.