really belonged to one of the seven ancient colleges. Considering how largely the non-collegiate population of the University outnumbered these small collegiate bodies, it is a very significant fact that so many vice-chancellors and proctors should have been chosen from them in days when election to both these offices was entirely free. Such a fact goes far to prove that the ‘college monopoly,’ of which so much has been heard in later times, owed its origin, in a great degree, to natural selection in a genuine struggle for existence between endowed and unendowed societies. FOOTNOTES: [3] In the Merton Statutes the words ‘Scholar’ and ‘Fellow’ are convertible, the Scholar being a Junior Fellow upon his first admission. [4] Though Canterbury College was founded in this century, it does not seem to have ranked with other colleges in the University, and no vice-chancellor or proctor is recorded to have been elected from it. CHAPTER III. PROGRESS OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. [Sidenote: Europe in the fourteenth century] The fourteenth century deserves to be regarded as the most progressive and eventful in the history of the Middle Ages. All the kingdoms of Europe were engaged in wars, for the most part destitute of permanent results, yet the work of civilisation went forward with unbroken steadiness and rapidity. The Spanish monarchies of Castile and Arragon continued their long struggle for supremacy with each other, and for national existence with the Mohammedan power at Granada. Germany was distracted by civil wars and double imperial elections; Italy was torn asunder by the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The usurpation and avarice of the Roman Court produced an all but general revolt against Papal authority; the seat of the Holy See was transferred for sixty years to Avignon, and the return of the Pope to Rome was followed by ‘the Great Schism,’ which lasted fifty years longer; Russia was subject to the Khan of Kipchak until its southern provinces were overrun by the hordes of Timur; Poland and Hungary were exhausting their strength in expeditions against their neighbours or against Venice, while the Ottoman Turks were advancing into the heart of Eastern Europe. England was entering upon its purely dynastic crusades for the possession of the Scotch and French crowns, which, fruitful as they were in military glory, diverted the energies of the nation, wasted its resources, and retarded its internal development for several generations. Nevertheless, literature, art, and education flourished marvellously in the midst of the storms which racked European society. Ancient learning was revived in Italy chiefly by the influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio; Dante became the father of modern Italian poetry; Cimabue and his pupils founded the Italian school of painting; scholastic philosophy culminated and gave place to a more independent spirit of inquiry; scientific research first began to emancipate