The colleges took seriously their responsibilities for discipline, and all things contrary to good manners and morals were prohibited. For the gravest offences, such as contumacy, crimes of violence, and heresy, expulsion was usually ordered. Among less serious delinquencies, explicitly forbidden and therefore we may assume not unknown, were bringing strangers into the house, sleeping out, and absence without leave; using insulting language, drunkenness, gambling, and frequenting taverns; keeping company with loose women; throwing missiles and carrying arms; and the keeping of dogs, hawks, falcons, and ferrets. In the regulations of many colleges, a course of study was indicated, and directions given that idleness was to be punished. Regular attendance at religious exercises was assumed, and was explicitly directed on certain occasions: I suppose that students performed such duties without much external pressure, and I know no record of the infliction of any penalty in early times for non-attendance. In the middle ages Latin was the language generally enforced, though occasionally French was permitted; this remained the rule until the seventeenth century. Conversation during dinner and supper was forbidden in many colleges, and of course was impossible in those cases where some book was then read aloud. At King's College, jumping and ball throwing, and at Clare College meetings in bedrooms for feasting and talking were also forbidden. At a somewhat later date Caius ordered his students to be in bed by eight o'clock at night, but they made up for this by rising very early in the morning. In general the punishment for minor faults was left to the discretion of the authorities. This was only reasonable, for a medieval college was a mixed community of lads and men, the members being of all ages from about fourteen or fifteen upwards; and rules enforced on boys of fourteen could not be applied to men of twenty-three or twenty-four, who were in fact already taking part in the teaching of the junior scholars. For all members, the ultimate penalty for the gravest offences was expulsion. For less serious misconduct, fines, restrictions on the food supplied, impositions, and confinement within the walls, are believed to have been common penalties, at any rate for adolescents; but, as I explain below, I think that corporal punishment was constantly inflicted on non-adults in lieu of a fine, which indeed boys would have had considerable difficulty in paying. As far as the younger students and the bachelors at colleges were concerned the extant regulations in regard to their exercises, amusements, incomings and outgoings, suggest that they were treated much like the junior and senior boys in a rather strict public school in the first half of the nineteenth century; and perhaps the senior graduate members were treated somewhat like residents in colleges at the same period.