At first the students lodged as "Chamberdekyns" with citizens, but that system proving dangerous to order, they were gathered into hostels, or, to use the more dignified name, Halls (_aulæ_) under a Principal, or Master of the University, who boarded and governed them. Of these Halls there were a great number, with their several names and signs. Till lately a few of them remained, though these had lost their original character, and become merely small Colleges, without any foundation except a Principal. The students in those days were mostly poor. Their indigence was almost taken for granted. Some of them begged; chests were provided by the charitable for loans to them. A poor student's life was hard; if he was earnest in study, heroic. He shared a room with three or four chums, he slept under a rug, his fare was coarse and scanty, his garment was the gown which has now become merely an academical symbol, and thankful he was to be provided with a new one. He had no fire in his room, no glass in his window. As his exercises in the University Schools began at five in the morning, it is not likely that he read much at night, otherwise he would have to read by the light of a feeble lamp flickering with the wind. His manuscript was painful to read. The city was filthy, the water polluted with sewage; pestilence often swept through the crowded hive. * * * * * Mediæval students were a rough set; not less rough than enthusiastic; rougher than the students of the Quartier Latin or Heidelberg, their nearest counterparts in recent times. They wore arms, or kept them in their chambers, and they needed them not only in going to and from the University over roads beset with robbers, but in conflicts with the townspeople, with whom the University was at war. With the townspeople the students had desperate affrays, ancient precursors of the comparatively mild town and gown rows of this century. The defiant horns of the town were answered by the bells of the University. Arrows flew; blood was shed on both sides; Halls were stormed and defended; till Royalty from Abingdon or Woodstock interfered with its men-at-arms, seconded by the Bishop with bell, book, and candle. A Papal Legate, an Italian on whom national feeling looks with jealousy, comes to Oxford. Scholars crowd to see him. There is a quarrel between them and his train. His cook flings a cauldron of boiling broth over an Irish student. The scholars fly to arms. The Legate is ignominiously chased from Oxford. Excommunications, royal thunders, and penitential performances follow. Jews settle in Oxford, ply their trade among the scholars, and form a quarter with invidiously wealthy mansions. There is a royal edict, forbidding them to exact more than forty-three per cent interest from the student. Wealth makes them insolent; they assault a religious procession, and with them also the students have affrays. Provincial feeling is strong, for the students are divided into two