The silence of Domesday Book respecting the University of Oxford must be taken as presumptive, though by no means conclusive, proof that it had no corporate existence at that date. Much learning has been spent in speculations on its origin and primitive constitution, but these speculations have little support in any facts historically known to us before the Norman Conquest. It is more than probable, however, that Oxford was already a resort of students and a place of education. Having been a residence of Edmund Ironside, Canute, and Harold I., as well as the seat of several National Councils, it was now recognised as a provincial capital by the erection of its castle, embracing within it the Collegiate Church of St. George; while the number of its monastic establishments would naturally attract poor scholars from all parts of England. The earliest schools, not in England only but throughout Europe, were attached to monasteries or cathedrals; and, in the absence of any contrary evidence, analogy almost compels us to regard the Church as the foster-mother of the University. In the ‘claustral’ schools of St. Frideswide, and the houses in Oxford belonging to abbeys, such as those of Abingdon and Eynsham, we may discern the original seminaries of academical teaching—the first rudiments of the _Studium Generale_, afterwards developed into the _Universitas Literaria_. On the other hand, it is certain that, side by side with these claustral schools, secular or lay schools were gradually opened—some boarding-schools, mainly designed for the reception of boys from the country, others mere classrooms frequented by the students who lodged either in private dwellings or in public hostels. It appears that before long the secular outnumbered the claustral schools, and became centred in a particular quarter of the city, stretching northward from the west end of St. Mary’s Church, afterwards known as School Street, and said to have existed in the year 1109. We may surmise with some confidence that in the infancy of the University its lecturers were almost exclusively clerks, but too often scholastic adventurers of mean attainments, whose lessons rose little above the barest elements of knowledge. But all theories of its rudimentary organisation are purely conjectural. ‘The Schools of Oxford’ first emerge into history in the next century, when they really attained a national celebrity, soon eclipsing those of Canterbury, Winchester, Peterborough, and others, which may have rivalled them in earlier times. [Sidenote: Intellectual revival of the twelfth century]