It is impossible to follow the course of the controversy here. Suffice it to say that when the war had been waged for some years, it seemed evident that the victory would lie with the Oxonians, who claimed Alfred as their founder, if they could prove their claim. And the claim appeared to be proved by a passage attributed to Asser, the contemporary historian of Alfred's deeds, and surreptitiously inserted into his edition of that author by the great Camden. But that passage occurs in none of the manuscripts of Asser, and certainly not in the one which Camden copied. It was probably adopted by him on the authority of an unscrupulous but interested partisan who, having invented it, attributed it to a "superior manuscript of Asser." The University cannot, then, claim Alfred the Great either as her founder or restorer. All the known facts and indications point the other way. It was not till 912, some years after Alfred's death, that Edward the Elder obtained possession of Oxford, which was outside Alfred's kingdom; Asser knew nothing of this foundation. It was not till the days of Edward III., that Ralph Higden's _Polychronicon_ apparently gave birth to the myth with the statement that Alfred-- "By the counsel of S. Neot the Abbot, was the first to establish schools for the various arts at Oxford; to which city he granted privileges of many kinds." And from that time the myth was repeated and grew. But if King Alfred did not found the University who did? or how did it come into existence? Briefly the case stands thus. Before the second half of the twelfth century--the age of Universities--there are no discoverable traces of such a thing at Oxford, but in the last twenty years of that century references to it are frequent and decided. The University was evidently established, and its reputation was widely spread. There abounded there, contemporaries inform us, "men skilled in mystic eloquence, weighing the words of the law, bringing forth from their treasures things new and old." And the University was dubbed by the proud title "The Second School of the Church." She was second, that is, to Paris, as a school of Theology, and to Paris, the researches of modern experts like Dr Rashdall lead us to believe, she owed her origin.