The colleges began as a counterpoise to the schools of the regular and mendicant orders, more particularly the latter. The friars, learned and powerful, naturally drew to them great numbers of the poor unattached scholars. Statutes ineffectually made eighteen years the lowest age of consent. The University had a hard fight to keep even its degrees in its own hands. This third great body of scholars, unattached to monks or friars, consisted of the ordinary or secular clergy, men qualifying not merely for the work of parish priests, but for what are now the lay professions of lawyer and doctor. They had a bad time of it while the friars were still popular. They had few endowments, and were forced to labour for a living, or to beg their way. It was common for poor scholars to serve as scouts. They lived either in private lodgings or in the numerous private Halls, Inns, or Hostels that covered the sites of the present colleges. Those are the second obliterated chapter among university buildings. They were simply lodging-houses, rented from the owner by a Master of Arts, who was styled Principal. By an early statute, that marks the encroachment of the University on the town, the owner of the hall was bound to let it to the first applicant who deposited the needful caution with the Vice-Chancellor. The Principal was paid by the inmates for board and tuition. The first colleges were such halls, furnished with an endowment for poor scholars, and with a set of statutes to regulate its administration. At first the scholars went to service at the nearest parish church; but gradually, as funds allowed, chapel and hall and library were built, and the familiar front with its gate-tower screened the old and new buildings. The full-grown College, as it had taken shape before the times of the Reformation and rich lay undergraduates, was a society incorporated for the benefit of poor scholars of the secular order. Its buildings replaced the single Hall or group of Halls that had been converted from private to corporate use, or else the old tenements were recast in the new mould. That new mould followed with modifications the plan of the monastic houses.