In those good old days boys were accustomed to seek the university at the ages of thirteen to fifteen. A Paris statute required them to be at least fourteen, and naturally many were older. Many of these students were beneficed, and boys were canons or even rectors of parish churches. In this capacity they obtained leave of absence to study in the universities, and so it was quite common at one time for rectors and ecclesiastics of all ages to appear in the rôle of university students. At the close of the fourteenth century, in the University of Prague, in the law school alone there appeared on the list of students one bishop, one abbot, nine archdeacons, 290 canons, 187 rectors, and still other minor ecclesiastics. At one time in the University of Bologna, in the registry of German corps, more than half the students were church dignitaries. Sad to relate, many of these clerical students were among the most disorderly and troublesome of the academic population, the statutes vainly prescribing that they should sit "as quiet as girls;" while, as Rashdall says, "even spiritual thunders had at times to be invoked to prevent them from shouting, playing, and interrupting." Considering the youthfulness of what we may call the freshmen, as many of them went up to the universities at the early age already mentioned, it is not strange that we hear of "fetchers" or "carriers" or "bryngers," who were detailed to escort them home; but we must remember that the roads were dangerous in those days, and that protection of some kind was necessary even for men. Proclamations against bearing arms usually made exceptions in favor of students travelling to or from the university. Students, many of them, lived in halls, or, as we would say now, dormitories, and one of them assumed the rôle of principal, or was delegated to exercise certain authority. Quite often this was the man who made himself responsible for the rent, whose authority came only from the voluntary consent of his fellow-students, or who was elected by them.