forma_[297].’ The responsions were latterly held in the new schools: before these were built, in the schools of the various Masters. The Bachelor had then completed the studies necessary for the degree of S.T.P. or D.D. These exercises seem usually to have been insisted on, more or less fully, even in the century before the Reformation. Friar John Sunday in 1454, having finished his lectures on the Sentences, supplicated for leave to incept after responding to each of the doctors and completing his course on the Bible: the grace was conceded on condition that he should respond and oppose eight times ‘_pro forma_,’ and respond twice ‘_preter formam_[298].’ Friar Thomas Anyden, S.T.B., supplicated (1507) that three responsions in the new schools with an examinatory sermon and ‘_introitus_’ of the Bible should suffice that he should be admitted to incept[299]. It was rarely that three years intervened before the admission to read the Sentences and inception[300]. Thus Friar Gilbert Saunders was admitted to oppose in Nov. 1511, and incepted in July 1513[301]. Friar John Smyth was admitted B.D. in Dec. 1512, and D.D. in July 1513[302]. Another of the same name however was allowed to incept in 1507 if he had spent four years in the study of theology after taking the bachelor’s degree[303]. We now come to the exercises and ceremonies connected with inception. First the grace had to be asked of Congregation; there was no fixed time for doing this[304]. Secondly came the ‘deponing,’ which was done by all the regent masters in the faculty present; all of them had to swear that they _knew_ the candidate to be a fit person; he must be of good life and honest conversation and not deformed in body (_corpore vitiati_)[305]. He then received in the ordinary form the Chancellor’s licence to incept, after swearing to observe the statutes of the University and to incept within a year of his admission[306].