_B._ Can you tell me why and when the Universities here, and in other places, first began? _A._ It seems, for the time, they began in the reign of the Emperor Charles the Great. Before which time, I doubt not, but that there were many grammar schools for the Latin tongue, which was the natural language of the Roman Church; but for Universities, that is to say, schools for the sciences in general, and especially for divinity, it is manifest that the institution of them was recommended by the Pope’s letter to the Emperor Charles the Great, and recommended further by a Council held in his time, I think, at Chalons-sur-Saone; and not long after was erected an University at Paris, and the college called University College at Oxford. And so by degrees several bishops, noblemen, and rich men, and some Kings and Queens, contributing thereunto, the Universities obtained at last their present splendour. _B._ But what was the Pope’s design in it? _A._ What other design was he like to have, but what you heard before, the advancement of his own authority in the countries where the Universities were erected? There they learned to dispute for him, and with unintelligible distinctions to blind men’s eyes, whilst they encroached upon the rights of kings. And it was an evident argument of that design, that they fell in hand with the work so quickly. For the first Rector of the University of Paris, as I have read somewhere, was Peter Lombard, who first brought in them the learning called School-divinity; and was seconded by John Scot of Duns, who lived in, or near the same time; whom any ingenious reader, not knowing what was the design, would judge to have been two of the most egregious blockheads in the world, so obscure and senseless are their writings. And from these the schoolmen that succeeded, learnt the trick of imposing what they list upon their readers, and declining the force of true reason by verbal forks; I mean, distinctions that signify nothing, but serve only to astonish the multitude of ignorant men. As for the understanding readers, they were so few, that these new sublime doctors cared not what they thought. These schoolmen were to make good all the articles of faith, which the Popes from time to time should command to be believed: amongst which, there were very many inconsistent with the rights of kings, and other civil sovereigns, as asserting to the Pope all authority whatsoever they should declare to be necessary _in ordine ad spiritualia_, that is to say, in order to religion. From the Universities also it was, that all preachers proceeded, and were poured out into city and country, to terrify the people into an absolute obedience to the Pope’s canons and commands, which, for fear of weakening kings and princes too much, they durst not yet call laws.