itself from magical arts; Roman law extended its dominion everywhere except in England, where, however, Chaucer and Wyclif gave the first powerful impulse to native English thought; free thinking in politics and religion penetrated deeply into the popular mind, and increasing refinement of manners kept pace with the growth of trade and industry. Universities sprang up one after another—in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Poland, in Hungary, in Austria, and in Germany; nor is it unduly rash to surmise that, if the invention of printing could have been anticipated by a century, the Renaissance and the Reformation itself might have preceded the capture of Constantinople and the discovery of America. [Sidenote: Social condition of the University] At the commencement of this century Oxford presented strange contrasts between the social and the intellectual aspects of its academical life. The great riot of 1297 was scarcely over, and had left a heritage of ill-will which bore fruit in the frightful conflict of 1354; the encounters between the northern and southern nations were of frequent recurrence, and there was no effective system of University discipline, while college discipline, still in its infancy, was confined within the precincts of Merton, University, and Balliol. The common herd of students, inmates of halls and inns and lodging-houses, were still crowded together in miserable sleeping-rooms and lecture-rooms, without domestic care or comfort, and strangers to all those frank and generous relations which naturally grow up between young Englishmen, especially of gentle birth, in the kindly intercourse of modern college life. They often rendered more or less menial services in return for their instruction, and were sometimes enabled to borrow from the University Chest; at other times they relapsed into mendicity, and asked for alms on the public highways. There were no libraries or museums, and the few books possessed by the University were stored in a vault under St. Mary’s Church. The laws of health being unknown, and every sanitary precaution neglected, the city of Oxford was constantly scourged with pestilence from which members of the University were fain to fly into neighbouring country villages. [Sidenote: Intellectual vigour of the University]