It was to obviate the necessity of paying these fees that the system of non-collegiate students, familiarly called “non-colls,” was devised in 1869. While the expenses of an undergraduate who is a member of a college average about £165 a year, £60 in excess of this and £60 less representing the higher scale of expenses on the one hand and the minimum on the other, the undergraduate who lives in lodgings and _is not a member of any college_ can live for £78 a year (if he does not require “coaching” or private tuition which costs about £9 a term) and it is just possible to take the _B.A._ degree after a three years’ residence which has cost you at the rate of £55 a year. Fifty years ago the minimum cost of living at Cambridge for a pensioner was £150 and double this sum involved no extravagant outlay. A fellow-commoner required £800 a year and could not live on less than £500. These were the aristocratic days of English universities and they were in sharp contrast to the time when scholars were poor, begged their way to and from college, and were included among vagabonds in the statute of 1380 directed against mendicancy. But the entertainment in those days was also widely different. Two fellows shared not only a room but a bed, or a two-bedded room would be shared by a fellow and two poor scholars. It was not till the xvi century that each fellow had a bed to himself and a room to himself if space permitted.[343] The dining hall was a comfortless room where rude fare was served at a tresselled board to guests who sat upon wooden stools. The conditions of the xiii and xiv centuries were not greatly bettered in the xvth and xvith, and Erasmus found it hard to stomach the fare at Queens’ College at a time when the Cambridge ale appears to have been no improvement on the “wine no better than vinegar” which came from the surrounding vineyards. [Sidenote: Early discipline.]