It is time to allude to the curious “privilege” which exercised so disastrous an effect upon the New College of two generations ago, the privilege of taking degrees without examination. William of Wykeham is not responsible for this _damnosa hereditas_. Nothing is heard of it till the beginning of the seventeenth century; and then the University recognized it as having been enjoyed since the earliest days of the College.[155] But its origin seems to be as follows.--So far from wishing his scholars to be exempt from the ordinary tests, the Founder peremptorily forbids them to sue for “graces” or dispensations from the residence or other statutable conditions of taking a degree. The grace of congregation was then required only when some of these conditions had not been complied with; if they had been, the degree was a matter of right. Even in Wykeham’s time these graces were scandalously common. In course of time the full statutable conditions were so seldom complied with that the grace of congregation came to be asked for as a matter of course: Wykehamists alone, mindful of their founder’s injunction, sought no graces. Hence what had been intended as an exceptional disability came to be regarded as an exceptional privilege; and when regular examinations were at length introduced, it was understood that the mysterious privilege carried with it exemption from this requirement also. Since a fair level of scholarship was secured by the fact that the places in New College were competed for by the boys of a first-rate classical school (although corrupt elections were not unknown), the privilege was not particularly ruinous so long as the examinations continued on the basis of the Laudian statutes. It was only when the Honour Schools were instituted at the beginning of this century that the exclusion of New College men from the Examination-schools shut out the College from the rapid improvement in industry and intellectual vitality which that measure brought with it for the best Oxford Colleges. The character of the College during the earlier part of its history was exactly of the kind which the founder designed. In Wykeham’s day the Scholastic Philosophy and Theology were already in their decadence. The history of mediæval thought, so far as Oxford is concerned, ends with that suppression of Wycliffism in 1411, which both Wykeham and his College (though not quite free from the prevalent Lollardism) had contributed to bring about. New College produced not schoolmen and theologians like Merton, but respectable and successful ecclesiastics in abundance--foremost among them, Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, the founder of All Souls. It is a characteristic circumstance that a New College man, John Wytenham, was at the head of the Delegacy for condemning Wycliffe’s books in 1411, all the other Doctors being monks or friars.