Early in the nineteenth century there was a Chancellor set over the scholars by the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese Oxford lay. Very soon the Chancellor was elected by the University; and the Masters in congregation could legislate, and sometimes did, although questions were often effectually decided by a popular vote among the students,--who also themselves chose by vote the heads of their hostels or halls. For there were, at an early date, houses already associated with learning, and governed either by a common landlord or by a scholar of some standing and age. There a man might read, and comfort himself according to his means, and finally at night stamp up and down a passage, to warm his feet, before going to sleep in a crowded bed-chamber. On any day there was a chance that some splendid man, coming a little in the rear of his fame, would arrive in Oxford, and lecture or read a book. Should kings, or priests, or rude citizens interfere, the scholar could rusticate voluntarily--as he sometimes did--at Stamford, or Reading, or Maidstone, or Cambridge, and there, as best he might, by study and self-denial, as by a sacrament, recreate the University. The City, and until our own time the Crown, had to pay in round sums for such an insult as the hanging of several scholars; the money lined the bottom of St. Frideswide’s chest. A man with no possessions but the leaf of a manuscript, or a dagger, or a cloak, left it with the keepers of the chest as security for a loan, whether he were Welsh, or Hungarian, or Italian, or French. An Englishman, William of Durham, who had enjoyed the University hospitality at Paris, first kindled the flame which was to be kept burning by so many afterwards, as a _focus perennis_ for the homeless student. He left Paris after a town-and-gown quarrel, along with many French students, whom Henry III. welcomed to Oxford in 1229. William went to Rome, before returning to England, and remembered Oxford when he lay dying at Rouen--perchance reminded there of the city which until fifty years ago was equal with it in ancient beauty, and has been clouded in the same way. He left in his will a sum of money to the University. It was employed in making more steadfast abodes for Oxford students; at a house, for example, that stood on the site of the bookseller’s shop opposite University College lodge. This act is counted the foundation of University College, with its original four masters, who shall be thought “most fit to advance or profit in the Holy Church and who have not to live handsomely without it in the state of Masters of Arts.”