What is certain is that the acting head of the University was always entitled _Cancellarius_ rather than _Rector Scholarum_, that from the beginning of Henry III.’s reign he is frequently mentioned under this official title, especially in the important charters of 1244 and 1255, and that by the middle of the thirteenth century he was treated as an independent representative of the University, while the official deputy of the bishop at the University was not the chancellor but the archdeacon of Oxford. At this period, then, we may regard the University as fully constituted, and the official list of chancellors begins in the year 1220, when three persons are mentioned as having filled the office, the last of whom is Robert Grosteste, afterwards the celebrated reforming bishop of Lincoln. From this epoch we may safely date the election of the chancellor by Convocation, though it long continued to be subject to confirmation by the diocesan. A century later (1322) the election was made biennial. [Sidenote: University chests, and sources of revenue in the thirteenth century. Rise of Halls] In the year 1219 the abbot and Convent of Eynsham took upon themselves the obligations laid upon the burgesses in 1214, so far as regarded the double provision for poor scholars. This agreement was carried out, yet the burgesses are still treated as liable in an ordinance issued, in 1240, by Robert Grosteste, then bishop of Lincoln, which provides for the regular application of the fund to its original purpose. This ordinance marks an important epoch in the growth of the University. The ‘Frideswyde Chest,’ and other chests formed on a like principle by successive benefactions for the relief of poor scholars, appear to have been the earliest form of corporate property held by the University. They continued to multiply up to the end of the fifteenth century, when they had reached the number of twenty-four at least, and are computed to have contained an aggregate sum of 2,000 marks, all of which might be in circulation on loan at the same time.[2] It is very difficult to ascertain what other sources of revenue the University may have possessed in the first stage of its existence. In the next stage, its income seems to have been largely derived from academical fines and fees on graces, as well as from duties paid by masters keeping grammar-schools and principals of halls, into which the primitive boarding-schools were first transforming themselves. It is clear that, at this period, the great mass of students, not being inmates of religious houses, were lodged and boarded in these unendowed halls, mostly hired from the citizens by clerks, who in some cases were not even graduates, but were regularly licensed by the chancellor or his commissary on September 9, and were subject to fixed rules of discipline laid down from time to time by the governing body of the University. How many of them may have been open in the middle of