his promotion to the see of Lincoln was steadily exerted to secure theological study among the Friars, as well as their establishment in the University; and in this work he was ably seconded by his scholar, Adam Marsh, or de Marisco, under whom the Franciscan school at Oxford attained a reputation throughout Christendom.  Lyons, Paris, and Koln borrowed from it their professors:  it was through its influence indeed that Oxford rose to a position hardly inferior to that of Paris itself as a centre of scholasticism.  But the result of this powerful impulse was soon seen to be fatal to the wider intellectual activity which had till now characterized the Universities.  Theology in its scholastic form resumed its supremacy in the schools.  Its only efficient rivals were practical studies such as medicine and law.  The last, as he was by far the greatest, instance of the freer and wider culture which had been the glory of the last century, was Roger Bacon, and no name better illustrates the rapidity and completeness with which it passed away.

[Sidenote:  Roger Bacon]

Roger Bacon was the child of royalist parents who were driven into exile and reduced to poverty by the civil wars.  From Oxford, where he studied under Edmund of Abingdon to whom he owed his introduction to the works of Aristotle, he passed to the University of Paris, and spent his whole heritage there in costly studies and experiments.  “From my youth up,” he writes, “I have laboured at the sciences and tongues.  I have sought the friendship of all men among the Latins who had any reputation for knowledge.  I have caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry, arithmetic, the construction of tables and instruments, and many needful things besides.”  The difficulties in the way of such studies as he had resolved to pursue were immense.  He was without instruments or means of experiment.  “Without mathematical instruments no science can be mastered,” he complains afterwards, “and these instruments are not to be found among the Latins, nor could they be made for two or three hundred pounds.  Besides, better tables are indispensably necessary, tables on which the motions of the heavens are certified from the beginning to the end of the world without daily labour, but these tables are worth a king’s ransom and could not be made without a vast expense.  I have often attempted the composition of such tables, but could not finish them through failure of means and the folly of those whom I had to employ.”  Books were difficult and sometimes even impossible to procure.  “The scientific works of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and other ancients cannot be had without great cost; their principal works have not been translated into Latin, and copies of others are not to be found in ordinary libraries or elsewhere.  The admirable books of Cicero de Republica are not to be found anywhere, so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious enquiry for them in different parts of the world, and by various