the manifold aids to study now enjoyed by the humblest students. Books existed only in the form of costly manuscripts treasured up in the chilly reading-rooms of monasteries; privacy was as impossible by day as by night; and the only chance of acquiring knowledge was by hanging upon the lips of a teacher lecturing to a mixed class of all ages and infinitely various attainments, in an ill-lighted room, unprovided with desks or fireplace, which in these days would be condemned as utterly unfit for an elementary school-room. The principal of his hall, it is true, was supposed to be his tutor, but we have positive evidence, in a statute of 1432, that principals themselves were sometimes illiterate persons, and of doubtful character; nor was it until that year that it was necessary for them to be graduates. What kind of language he would hear, and what kind of habits he would learn, from his chamber-mates and class-mates in the century preceding the age of Chaucer, we can be at no loss to imagine. And yet the inmate of a hall, being under some kind of domestic superintendence, was a model of academical propriety compared with the unattached students, or ‘chamber-dekyns,’ whose enormities fill so large a space in the mediæval annals of the University. [Sidenote: ‘Chamber-dekyns’] It is possible that a certain jealousy on the part of principals and others personally interested in the prosperity of halls may have exaggerated the vices of these extra-aularian students. At the same time it is self-evident that raw youths congregated together, under no authority, in the houses of townspeople, or ‘laymen,’ would be far more likely to be riotous and disorderly than members of halls, or, still more, of colleges. Accordingly, the ‘chamber-dekyns’ were always credited with the chief share in the street brawls and other excesses which so often disgraced the University in the Middle Ages. The leading statute on the subject, it is true, was passed in the year 1432, when colleges and halls had already established a decisive ascendency, and when the ‘chamber-dekyns’ may have sunk into greater contempt than in earlier times. But that statute, abolishing the system of lodging in private houses, treats its abuses as of long standing, and probably describes a state of things which had existed for two centuries. It is here recited that the peace of the University is constantly disturbed by persons who, having the appearance of scholars, dwell in no hall and are subject to no principal, but lurk about the town in taverns and brothels, committing murders and thefts; wherefore it is ordained that all scholars must reside in some college or hall, under pain of imprisonment, and that no townsman shall harbour scholars without special leave from the chancellor. [Sidenote: Street brawls and disorders]