More than one historian has remarked that the state of education in Scotland had always been considerably in advance of what might have been expected from its backward civilisation. This has been usually traced to the enduring influence of the old Celtic Church--a Church which had maintained its hold on the country for more than seven centuries, and which had always looked upon the education of the people as a religious duty. Old Celtic ecclesiastical rules declared that it was as important to teach boys and girls to read, as to dispense the sacraments, and to take part in _soul-friendship_ (confession). The Celtic monastery had always been an educational centre; and when Charles the Great established the High Schools which grew to be the older Universities of northern Europe, the Celtic monasteries furnished many of the teachers. The very complete educational system of the old Church had been taken over into the Roman Church which supplanted it, under Queen Margaret and her sons. Hence it was that the Cathedral and Monastery Schools produced a number of scholars who were eager to enrich their stores of learning beyond what the mother-country could give them, and the Scotch wandering student was well known during the Middle Ages on the Continent of Europe. One Scottish bishop founded a Scots College in Paris for his countrymen; other bishops obtained from English kings safe-conducts for their students to reside at Oxford and Cambridge. This scholastic intercourse brought Scotland in touch with the intellectual movements in Europe. Scottish students at Paris listened to the lectures of Peter Dubois and William of Ockham when they taught the theories contained in the _Defensor Pacis_ of Marsiglio of Padua, who had expounded that the Church is not the hierarchy, but the Christian people, and had denied both the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the Pope. The _Rotuli Scotiæ_,[275] or collection of safe-conducts issued by English monarchs to inhabitants of the northern kingdom, show that a continuous stream of Scottish students went to the English Universities from 1357 to 1389. During the earlier years of this period--that is, up to 1364--the safe-conducts applied for and granted entitled the bearers to go to Oxford or Cambridge or any other place of learning in England; but from 1364 to 1379 Oxford seems to have been the only University frequented. During one of these years (1365) safe-conducts were given to no fewer than eighty-one Scottish students to study in Oxford. The period was that during which the influence of Wiclif was most powerful, when Oxford seethed with Lollardy; and the teachings of the great Reformer were thus brought into Scotland. Lollardy seems to have made great progress. In 1405, Robert, Duke of Albany, was made Governor of Scotland, and Andrew Wyntoun in his Metrical Chronicle praises him for his fidelity to the Church: "He wes a constant Catholike, All Lollard he hatyt and heretike."[276]