ency, required also a very long period of apprenticeship in
the University. There were many youths in the Middle Ages (as there
are to-day) neither "pauperes" nor "indigentes" in the strict (p. 076)
sense of the word, but too poor to be able to afford sixteen years of
study in the University. The length of the medieval curriculum
produced some of the necessities which colleges were established to
meet.

That the founders were not thinking of the poorest classes of the
community, is evident from many provisions of their statutes. They
frequently provided only board and lodging, and left their
beneficiaries to find elsewhere the other necessities of life; they
appointed penalties (such as the subtraction of commons for a month)
which would have meant starvation to the penniless; they contemplated
entertainments and journeys, and in the case of a New College Doctor,
even the maintenance of a private servant, at the personal expense of
their scholars and Fellows; they prohibited the expenditure of money
on extravagant dress and amusements. William of Wykeham made
allowances for the expense of proceeding to degrees in the University
when one of his Fellows had no private means and no friends to assist
him ("propter paupertatem, inopiam, et penuriam, carentiamque
amicorum"); but the sum to be thus administered was strictly limited
and the recipient had to prove his poverty, and to swear to the truth
of his statement. The very frequent insistence upon provisions for a
Founder's kin, suggests that the society, to which he wished a (p. 077)
large number of his relations to belong, was of higher social standing
than an almshouse; and the liberal allowances for the food of the
Fellows, as contrasted with the sums allotted to servants and
choristers, show that life in College was intended to be easy and
comfortable. The fact that menial work was to be done by servants and
that Fellows were to be waited on at table by the "poor boys" is a
further indication of the dignity of the Society. At New College, it
was the special duty of one servant to carry to the schools, the books
of the Fellows and scholars. The possession of considerable means by a
medieval Fellow, is illustrated by two wills, printed in "Munimenta
Academica." Henry Scayfe, Fellow of Queen's College, left in 1449,
seven pounds to his father, smaller sums to a large number of friends,
including sixpence to every scholar of the College, and also disposed
by wil