tings in bedrooms (even meetings of Masters of Arts)
for the purpose of feasting or of talking. If anyone wishes to (p. 060)
receive a friend at dinner or supper, he must apply to the Master for
leave, and such leave is to be very rarely given. Conversation in Hall
was prohibited by the rule of silence and by the provision of a
reader, which we have already found at Merton. The book read was
almost invariably the Bible. William of Wykeham, who was followed in
this, as in other respects, by later College founders, forbade his
scholars to remain in Hall after dinner or supper, on the ground that
they were likely to talk scandal and quarrel; but on great Feast days,
when a fire was allowed in the Hall, they might sit round and indulge
in canticles and in listening to poems and chronicles and "mundi hujus
mirabilia." The words, of the statute (which reappear in those of
later colleges) seem to imply that even on winter evenings a fire
burned in the Hall only on Feast days, and the medieval student must
have suffered severely from cold. There were, as a rule, no fireplaces
in private rooms until the sixteenth century, when we find references
to them, _e.g._ in the statutes of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and
the wooden shutters which took the place of windows shut out the
scanty light of a winter day. When a Disputation (_cf._ p. 146) was
held in Hall at night, a fire was lit, but we are not told how, when
there was no Disputation or Colleges meeting, the medieval student
spent the time between supper and the "nightcap" which accompanied (p. 061)
Compline. Dinner was at ten in the morning and supper at six in the
evening. Dr Caius, in the middle of the sixteenth century, ordered his
students to be in bed by eight o'clock in the evening, and "early to
bed" must have been the custom on winter nights in a medieval College.
"Early to rise" was the stern law, even in the dark mornings, for the
student's day began at six o'clock, and he must often have listened to
lectures which commenced in the dark, although dawn overtook the
lecturer before he finished his long exposition. In early times there
was no provision for breakfast, and, though the existence of such a
meal is distinctly contemplated in the statutes of Queen's College,
Oxford, there is no hint of it in those of New College. Probably some
informal meal was usual everywhere, and was either paid for privately
or winked at by the authorities. The absence of any general