Even in the fifteenth century, the halls were tending to pass into the possession of the colleges, and later events made the tendency a fact. "As stars lose their light when the sun ariseth," says an ancient Cambridge worthy, "so all these hostels decayed by degrees when endowed colleges began to appear." The Reformation, and a recurrent pestilence, "the sweating sickness," a kind of inflammatory rheumatism due apparently to the unwholesome situation of the university, resulted in a sharp falling off in the number of students. The colleges lived on, however thinned their ranks, by virtue of the endowments; but the halls disappeared with the students who had frequented them. In 1526 it was recorded that sixteen had lately been abandoned. When the numbers of the university swelled again under Elizabeth, the increase found place partly in the few halls that were left, but mainly in the colleges. In 1602 there were only eight halls, and these were all mere dependencies of separate colleges. "_Singulæ singulis a colegiis pendent_," as a contemporary expresses it. Only one of these, St. Edmund Hall, now retains even a show of the old democratic independence, and this has lately been brought into closer subjection to Queen's College. Socially as well as educationally, the mediæval university faded before the organization and endowment of the colleges. The life of Oxford was concentrated in a dozen or more separate institutions, and so thoroughly concentrated that there was little association, intellectual or social, between any two of them. V THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE If the tutors of New College were epoch-making, the amplitude and splendor of its social life were no less so. Its original buildings are in such perfect preservation that it is hard to believe that they are almost the oldest in Oxford, and that the New College quadrangle is the father of all quads. The establishment of the "head" was of similar dignity. The master of Balliol received forty shillings yearly; the warden of New College, forty pounds. In the statutes of an old Cambridge college we find it required that since it would be "indecent" for the master to go afoot, and "scandalous" to the college for him to "conducere hackeneye," he might be allowed one horse. The warden of New College had a coach and six. As century followed century the value of the endowments increased, and the scale of living was proportionately raised. The colleges in general became the home of comfort, and sometimes of a very positive luxury.