Mr. J. Bass Mullinger has published (_Hist. Univ. Camb._ pp. 218-220) a highly interesting statute relating to hostels which dates in all probability from the end of the xiii c., and shows how rapidly university rights in these _hospitia locanda_ were extended as a consequence of Henry’s rescript (p. 47). Any scholar who “desired to be principal of a hostel” offered his “caution“--with sureties or pledges--to the landlord and became _ipso facto_ its head, and could be instituted by the chancellor against the will of the landlord. The scholar, who has become principal, may not abdicate in favour of a fellow scholar but only give up possession to the said landlord. The next candidate could also appeal to the chancellor should the landlord refuse his request to succeed when a vacancy in the principalship occurred. An interesting clause provides that though the landlord should agree with the scholar-principal that “mine hostel” should not be taxed, the scholars who come to live there may, in spite of both of them, have the house taxed by the taxors, “inasmuch as agreements between private persons cannot have effect to the prejudice of public rights.” [97] For university and collegiate officials, see iv. pp. 203-10. [98] i. 29, 38, ii. 55-6. [99] See iv. 217 _n._, and early college discipline pp. 221-2. [100] Balsham (a village 9-1/2 miles S.E. of Cambridge) was one of the 10 manorhouses, palaces, and castles of the bishops of Ely in the xiv c. Montacute resided here in 1341. In 1401 a controversy regarding archidiaconal jurisdiction in the university was held here: a similar dispute occurred in Balsham’s time (p. 28). On the alienation of this manor from the see of Ely it was purchased by the founder of the Charterhouse, and now forms part of the endowment of that college. There is a mention of Hugh de Balsham (Hugo de Belesale) in Matthew Paris. [101] S. John’s College, pp. 122-3. [102] iv. p. 214. [103] Gray, _Installation Ode_. There has been little water in Coe fen for the last hundred years. The wall and water gate were made during the mastership of Warkworth and the episcopacy of Alcock (1486-1500) and ornamented with the arms of the latter, who was probably a Peterhouse man. [104] i. p. 22. Their house was on a messuage purchased by them “opposite the chapel of S. Edmund“: it lay on the south of the two hostels, and reached “as far as the marsh“--_i.e._ Coe fen. [105] The rebuilding of the hall and combination room took place in 1866-70. Gilbert Scott, William Morris, Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown were called in, and an excellent piece of work accomplished, the fellows’ old “Stone parlour” and “inner parlour” being thrown into one to make the present picturesque combination room. [106] College libraries, p. 138 _n._ The two Beauforts, the Cardinal and the Duke of Exeter, and two of Henry VI.’s physicians Roger Marshall and John Somerset (p. 106), all enriched this library.