Next in dignity to professors are the Readers in the different subjects, who act as a sort of suffragans and assistants to professors; and next to these come the lecturers in branches of knowledge which range from comparative philology to electrical engineering, from medical jurisprudence to ethnology.[311] [Sidenote: Lambeth degrees and degrees by royal mandate.] The Pope was the fountain of graduate honour in the middle ages and conferred degrees in all the faculties, and he does so still. Doctors and masters from Rome would receive [Illustration: MARKET STREET AND HOLY TRINITY CHURCH In this picture Holy Trinity Church (of which Charles Simeon was incumbent) with its spire may be seen on the left. The cool grey building in the middle of the picture is the Henry Martyn Hall, a modern structure. In the distance is seen the Tower and North side of Great St. Mary’s.] incorporation at Cambridge, and Englishmen without a degree would be given, on occasion, a degree by the Pope.[312] The general statute of Henry VIII. conveying [Sidenote: A.D. 1534.] to the primate all licences and dispensations which had heretofore “been accustomed to be had and obtained from Rome,” transferred the faculty of conferring degrees in England from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This faculty had, until the date of the statute, formed part and parcel of the legatine powers, and had been exercised as such by Wolsey. It was among the more important powers transferred under the statute, relating to licences of the taxable sum of £4 and over, and required confirmation by Letters Patent under the great seal, or enrolment in Chancery. The right was exercised by successive archbishops, and every faculty so granted rehearsed the authority of parliament by which authority the said power was now vested in the see of Canterbury. In the reign of George I. the power was for the first time disputed. The then Bishop of Chester refused to induct a Lambeth _B.D._ and a law suit followed, as a result of [Sidenote: A.D. 1722.] which a prescriptive and statutable right was made out for the practice. The matter was then carried by appeal to the King’s Bench and decided in favour of the archbishop, three years later, in 1725. [Sidenote: A.D. 1660-1700.]