Time would fail me to tell of the various disputations in which our student had to figure at various stages of his career; but disputations, though to the nervous student their terrors must have exceeded those of modern _viva_, had this advantage, that there was no “plucking” or “ploughing” in the question. A candidate who had done very badly might fail to get the required number of Masters to testify to his competency when he applied for the degree; and very incapable students, if poor and humbly-born, were probably choked off in this way. It is certain that a large number never took even the B.A. degree. But there is no record of anybody having been formally refused a degree in Arts. And yet the Master’s degree in the Middle Ages was in reality what it still is in theory--a license to teach. For a year after admission to his degree, the new M.A. was _necessario regens_, and was obliged to give “ordinary lectures” in the public schools. After that he was free to enter upon the study of one of the higher Faculties. Those who took Theology spent the rest of their academical career in the study of the Bible and “the Sentences” of Peter the Lombard--much more of the Sentences than of the Bible. It took eleven years’ study to become a D.D.; naturally most got livings and “went down” before that. Those who obtained leave to study Law would usually take a degree in Civil Law first, and then proceed to the study of Canon Law, that is to say the _Decretum_ of Gratian and the Papal _Decretals_. There were always to be twenty Canonists and Civilians in the House. Two scholars alone might take up Medicine, and two Astronomy or Astrology. Wykeham is the only College-founder who treats Astronomy as a recognized Faculty; but belief in Astrology was on the increase in fourteenth-century England, and reached its maximum amid the enlightenment of the sixteenth century.