Contemporary evidence would serve us best if we could get it, but the diarists and letter-writers are mostly silent on the subject. From this, however, I conclude that generally the disciplinary regulations were thought sensible. Life in the University may have been hard and probably was so, but I do not believe that discipline was unreasonable. All the evidence is to the contrary. Thus the above-mentioned Tusser, a student of no special brilliancy, who entered at Trinity Hall in the early half of the sixteenth century speaks thankfully of leaving school, and says: "To Cambridge thence ... I got at last, There joy I felt, there trim I dwelt, There heaven from hell, I shifted well, With learned men, a number then, the time I passed." Coming now to definite punishments, I mention successively corporal punishments, such as birching, the use of the stocks, and stanging; fines, direct and indirect; deprivation of days or standing; gatings; impositions; declaratory confessions; and rustications and expulsions. _Birching, Flogging._ Birching remained a recognized punishment for the younger students in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but I think that in practice it was not often inflicted except on boys. One or two examples of orders directing it will suffice. On 8 May 1572, the Vice-Chancellor, Whitgift, issued an order which is so detailed that I write it at length. Here it is: If any scholar shall go into any river, pool, or other water in the county of Cambridge; by day or night, to swim or wash, he shall, if under the degree of bachelor of arts, for the first offence be sharply and severely whipped publicly in the common hall of the College in which he dwells, in the presence of all the fellows, scholars, and others dwelling in the College, and on the next day shall be again openly whipped in the public school, where he was or ought to be an auditor, before all the auditors, by one of the proctors or some other assigned by the Vice-Chancellor, and for the second offence every such delinquent shall be expelled his College and the University for ever. But if he shall be a bachelor of arts, then for the first offence he shall be put in the stocks for a whole day, in the common hall of his College, and shall, before he is liberated, pay 10s towards the commons of the College, and for the second offence shall be expelled his College and the University. And if he shall be a master of arts, or bachelor of law, physic or music, or of superior degree, he shall be severely punished, at the judgment and discretion of the Master of his College. From this it is clear that at that time undergraduates, even of mature age, were liable to be flogged as a part of the ordinary discipline of the University and College, but probably it was unusual to inflict the penalty.