Capitouls bore the pall, and all fathers of families were required to walk in the procession.  When they came to the Schools, the citizens solemnly begged pardon of the University, and the cortege was joined by 3000 scholars.  Finally, it cost the city 15,000 livres tournois or more to regain their civic privileges.[3]

The late Mr Cecil Rhodes once summarized all Fellows of Colleges as children in matters of finance.  Be that as it may, you will find nothing more constant in history than the talent of the Universities for extracting money or money’s worth out of a riot.  Time (I speak as a parent) has scarcely blunted that faculty; and still—­since where young men congregate, noise there must be—­our Universities like Wordsworth’s Happy Warrior

     turn their necessity to glorious gain.

These were the excesses of young ‘bloods,’ and their servants:  but with them mingled scholars not less ferocious in their habits because almost desperately poor.  You all know, I dare say, that very poor scholars would be granted licences to beg by the Chancellor.  The sleeve of this gown in which I address you represents the purse or pocket of a Master of Arts, and may hint to you by its amplitude how many crusts he was prepared to receive from the charitable.

Now, choosing to ignore (because it has been challenged as overpainted) a picture of penury endured by the scholars of St John’s College in this University, let me tell you two stories, one well attested, the other fiction if you will, but both agreeable as testifying to the spirit of youth which, ever blowing upon their sacred embers, has kept Oxford and Cambridge perennially alive.

My first is of three scholars so poor that they possessed but one ‘cappa’ and gown between them.  They took it in turns therefore, and when one went to lecture the other two kept to their lodgings.  I invite you even to reflect on the joy of the lucky one, in a winter lecture room, dark, with unglazed windows, as he listened and shuffled his feet for warmth in the straw of the floor. [No one, by the way, can understand the incessant harping of our early poets upon May-time and the return of summer until he has pictured to himself the dark and cold discomfort of a Middle-English winter.] These three poor scholars fed habitually on bread, with soup and a little wine, tasting meat only on Sundays and feasts of the Church.  Yet one of them, Richard of Chichester, who lived to become a saint, saepe retulit quod nunquam in vita sua tam jucundam, tam delectabilem duxerat vitam—­that never had he lived so jollily, so delectably.

That is youth, youth blessed by friendship.  Now for my second story, which is also of youth and friendship.—­

Two poor scholars, who had with pains become Masters of Arts and saved their pence to purchase the coveted garb, on the afternoon of their admission took a country walk in it, together flaunting their new finery.  But, the day being gusty, on their return across the bridge, a puff of wind caught the biretta of one and blew it into the river.  The loss was irrecoverable, since neither could swim.  The poor fellow looked at his friend.  His friend looked at him.  ‘Between us two,’ he said, ’it is all or naught,’ and cast his own cap to float and sink with the other down stream.