Meanwhile, another need than that of mere schools and lecture-halls had begun to be felt. The scholars who came for what they could get from the teachers--the regents and the doctors--flocked from various quarters; they were young, they were not all fired with the student's love of learning; they were sometimes noisy, sometimes frolicsome, sometimes vicious. As now is the case at Edinburgh and Heidelberg, so it was then at Cambridge, the bonds of discipline were very slight; the scholars had to take their chance; they lodged where they could, they lived anyhow, each according to his means; they were homeless. It was inevitable that all sorts of grave evils should arise. The lads--they were mere boys--got into mischief, they got into debt with the Jews; for there were Jews at Cambridge, not a few; they were preyed upon by sharpers, were fleeced on the right hand and on the left; many of them learned more harm than good. The elder men, and they who had consciences and hearts, shook their heads, and asked what could be done? For a long time the principle of _laissez faire_ prevailed: the young fellows were left to the tender mercies of the townsfolk. There was no grandmotherly legislation in those days. Gradually a kind of joint-stock arrangement came into vogue. Worthy people seemed to have hired a house which they called a _hostel_ or hall, and sub-let the rooms to the young fellows; the arrangement appears to have been clumsily managed, and led to dissensions between town and gown; the townsmen soon discovered that the gownsmen were gainers by the new plan, and they themselves were losers. They grumbled, protested, quarrelled. But it was a move in the right direction, and a beginning of some moral discipline was made, and that could not but be well. These _hostels_ were set up at Cambridge certainly at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and how long before we cannot tell; but it was at Oxford that the first _college_, as we understand the term, rose into being. It was Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, who was the father of the collegiate system in England. So far from embarking upon a new experiment without careful deliberation, he spent twelve years of his life in working out his ideas and in elaborating the famous _Rule of Merton_, of which it is not at all too much to say that its publication constituted an era in the history of education and learning in England. Merton died in 1277. Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, who survived him nine years, appears to have been moved with a desire to do for Cambridge what Merton had done for Oxford. Balsham is spoken of as the founder of St. Peter's College, and in one sense he was so. The bishops of Ely were the patrons of Cambridge. Bishop Balsham asked himself what could be done, and set himself to deal with the problems which presented themselves for solution in the condition of his own University. He was not a great man, that seems clear enough: his schemes were crude; he bungled.