licensing grammar masters from the Archdeacon or other official to whom it naturally belonged. A fourteenth-century code of statutes for the Oxford grammar schools orders the appointment of two Masters of Arts to superintend them, and gives some minute instructions about the teaching. Grammar masters are to set verses and compositions, to be brought next day for correction; and they are to be specially careful to see that the younger boys can recognise the different parts of speech and parse them accurately. In choosing books to read with their pupils, they are to avoid the books of Ovid "de Arte Amandi" and similar works. Boys are to be taught to construe in French as well as in English, lest they be ignorant of the French tongue. The study of French was not confined to the grammar boys: the University recognised the wisdom of learning a language necessary for composing (p. 136) charters, holding lay-courts, and pleading in the English fashion, and lectures in French were permitted at any hour that did not interfere with the regular teaching of Arts subjects. Such lectures were under the control of the superintendents of the grammar masters. The degrees which Oxford and Cambridge conferred in Grammar did not involve residence or entitle the recipients to a vote in Convocation; but the conferment was accompanied by ceremonies which were almost parodies of the solemn proceedings of graduation or inception in a recognised Faculty, a birch taking the place of a book as a symbol of the power and authority entrusted to the graduand. A sixteenth-century Esquire Bedel of Cambridge left, for the benefit of his successors, details of the form for the "enteryng of a Master in Gramer." The "Father" of the Faculty of Grammar (at Cambridge the mysterious individual known as the "Master of Glomery") brought his "sons" to St Mary's Church for eight o'clock mass. "When mass is done, fyrst shall begynne the acte in Gramer. The Father shall have hys sete made before the Stage for Physyke (one of the platforms erected in the church for doctors of the different faculties, etc.) and shall sytte alofte under the stage for Physyke. The Proctour shall say, Incipiatis. When the Father hath argyude as shall plese the Proctour, the Bedeyll in (p. 137) Arte shall bring the Master of Gramer to the Vyce-chancelar, delyveryng hym a Palmer wyth a Rodde, whych the Vyce-chancelar shall gyve to the seyde Master in Gramer, and so create hym Master. Then shall the Bedell purvay for every master in Gramer a shrewde Boy, whom the master in Gramer shall bete openlye in the Scolys, and the master in Gramer shall give the Boy a Grote for Hys Labour, and another Grote to hym that provydeth the Rode and the Palmer &c. de singulis. And thus endythe the Acte in that Facultye." We know of the existence of similar ceremonies at Oxford. "Had the ambition to take these degrees in Grammar been widely diffused," says Dr Rashdall, "the demand for