in Cambridge of these great establishments, always housing a certain number of students, gave stability to the nascent University, and tended to prevent its dissipation in times of stress: this is a point in our early history which is sometimes overlooked. Students from Houses of the Benedictine or Black Monks were also sent to Cambridge, but until 1428 they seem to have had no special home of their own: in that year the Order built for them a hostel known as Buckingham House which now forms part of the first court of Magdalene College. These conventual Houses were outside town and university authority, but their wealth and position made them influential. Striking evidence of this is afforded by the facts that they secured to their members the right to proceed direct to degrees in divinity without graduating in arts--a privilege not granted to students in law or medicine--and that at every congregation of the University the senior religious doctor present could veto the offer of any grace and so block all business. These privileges suggest that monastic students were the dominant class in the early days of the University. They were, however, naturally distrusted by other students, for admittedly they owed allegiance to outside bodies, and no man can serve two masters. By the end of the thirteenth century the monastic movement had spent its force, and thenceforth the religious students took a constantly decreasing share in university activities; of course they disappeared at the reformation, when the monasteries throughout the country were suppressed. I come next to the question of the secular students in arts, most or all of whom would be clerks in major or minor orders. Rejecting the migration theory of the origin of the University, I do not suppose that in its earliest days these secular students were numerous, for the vicinity cannot have provided many such men, but as soon as the University acquired reputation as a centre of higher teaching they would be attracted to it from a wide area, and their numbers would be increased by many glomerels who would continue their course as students in arts. In the course of the thirteenth century these secular students became strong enough to assert themselves against the position and privileges assumed by the religious students, and after that century graces were constantly passed (_ex. gr._ in 1303) to prevent monastic interference in academic affairs, or (as in 1369) to limit the number of monastic graduates.