The moment when they made their appearance was at least as propitious historically as it had been at Oxford, and the independent growth of Cambridge, its escape from the intellectual thraldom of that scholasticism of which the Franciscans were the chief exponents, are hence doubly significant. The quarrels which arose in the early xiv century between the officials of the university and the friars prove that the religious societies which shared its academic life did by no means act in permanent harmony with it. Thus in 1303 the chancellor quarrelled with the Franciscans and Dominicans and excommunicated two of the friars, and later in the century the university had to prohibit novices in the Cambridge friaries from proceeding to their degrees under eighteen years of age. Then, as now, the Franciscans were accustomed to recruit very little lads for the noviciate, all of whom probably received their education at the public Cambridge schools of grammar and theology, and might be seen strutting about as full-fledged “masters of arts before they were masters of themselves.”[50] Before the xiii century closed--from the date of Hugh de Balsham’s death--the university ceased to receive any help from monastic learning, for the monks avoided Cambridge, and even Norwich priory sent its students to Oxford.[51] Less than a hundred years elapsed, and we find Gaunt, Pembroke, and Scrope--the court party--opposing the pretensions and the temporalities of the clergy in the company of Cambridge men. Pembroke--the representative of the house of Valence[52]--is their spokesman, and it is Scrope [Sidenote: A.D. 1371.] and Sir Robert Thorpe, Master of a Cambridge college, who take the Purse and the Seals from the hands of their episcopal holders Brantingham and William of Wykeham. This movement, as Stubbs points out, was independent of Wyclif’s; and it is remarkable that while William of Wykeham was influencing Oxford the theories for which he stood were being repulsed at Cambridge. [Sidenote: Cambridge and the jurisdiction of Ely.]