For in the days of its infancy the University had enough to do in protecting its own liberties from outside attack. It was therefore unable to exercise individual authority over its heterogeneous members. It provided instruction for them, it guarded their persons jealously from assaults from without, and fought their battle right lustily when jealous townsmen or papal emissaries sought to interfere with liberty or life. But for the rest, the clerks and scholars lived in a state of glorious and almost barbaric liberty, and all that Chancellor or Proctors could hope to attempt was to restrain any serious outbreaks of violence, either between clerks and citizens, or between the various sections of the clerks themselves. Open rioting in the streets was checked as far as possible; but an immense amount of roistering and disorder could and did prevail without let or hindrance, and there was no certainty from day to day that some bloody collision might not occur in the city which might have a serious termination. Stories were told of clerks who had been set upon and killed by angry citizens, of citizens who had been slain by clerks, of Masters even who had met with injuries too often fatal in their effects, sometimes from the hands of citizens, sometimes from those of scholars inflamed by passion or drink. There had been times when the King had had to interfere in order to calm the strife between the contending parties. There had also been times when the Masters and scholars had deserted Oxford by hundreds, if not thousands, and had threatened to establish themselves in other localities. This had been done when the citizens had put upon them some marked indignity and affront, and had generally resulted in the submission and humiliation of the town. For, as was pointed out to the burgesses, the importance and prosperity of Oxford mainly depended upon the presence there of this school of learning, and if they drove away the scholars by their ill-judged enmity, they were signing the death-warrant of their own city. It was often to these quarrels and their adjudication that the endowments (if such a word can be employed) of the University were owed. The citizens would submit, and agree to pay so many marks a year in token of their penitence, and these moneys were called "chests," and formed a fund from which poor scholars might borrow without interest, leaving a pledge behind; and private individuals would sometimes start a similar chest, from which system gradually developed the scholarships and exhibitions of our own days. But the life of the infant University was a very strange one as compared with the collegiate system which gradually grew out of it. Thirteen or fourteen was a common age for a youth to commence life as a clerk, and even at that tender age very little supervision was given him.