You can fancy them at last coming over Shotover Hill, down the "horse path" past S. Clement's, and so reaching safely their journey's end. Once in Oxford, they would take up their abode in a monastery to which they had an introduction; in a college, if, thanks to the fortune of birth or education, they had been elected to share in the benefits of a foundation; as menials attached to the household of some wealthier student, if they were hard put to it; in a hall or house licensed to take in lodgers, if they were foreigners or independent youths. On taking up his residence in one of these halls, the mediæval student would find that Alma Mater, in her struggles with the townsmen, had been fighting his battles. Lest he should fall among thieves, it had been provided that the rents charged should be fixed by a board of assessors; lest the sudden influx of this floating population should produce scarcity, and therefore starvation prices, the transactions of the retailers were carefully regulated. They were forbidden to buy up provisions from the farmers outside the city, and so establish a "corner"; they were forbidden even to buy in Oxford market till a certain hour in the morning. The prices of vendibles were fixed in the interests of the poor students. Thus in 1315 the King ordained that "a good living ox, stalled or corn-fed, should be sold for 16s., and no higher; if fatted with grass for 14s. A fat cow, 12s. A fat hog of two years old, 3s. 4d. A fat mutton, corn-fed or whose wool is not grown, 1s. 8d. A fat mutton shorn, 1s. 2d. A fat goose, 2d. A fat hen or two chickens, one penny. Four pigeons or twenty-four eggs, one penny." The halls were, at any rate originally, merely private houses adapted to the use of students. A common room for meals, a kitchen and a few bedrooms were all they had to boast. Many of them had once belonged to Jews, for they were large and built of stone. And the Jews, being wealthy, had introduced a higher standard of comfort into Oxford, and at the same time, being a common sort of prey, they probably found that stone houses were safer as well as more luxurious. Moysey's Hall and Lombard's Hall bore in their names evident traces of their origin. Other halls derived their names from other causes. After the great fire in 1190 the citizens, in imitation of the Londoners, and the Jews, had rebuilt their houses of stone. [Illustration: S. Alban's Hall Merton College]