r unpunctuality, for negligence and idleness, for playing, (p. 067)
laughing, talking, making a noise or speaking English in, a
lecture-room, for insulting fellow-students, or for disobedience to
his pastors and masters, the Brasenose undergraduate was to be
promptly flogged. Among the crimes for which the birch is ordered we
find "making odious comparisons," a phrase which throws some light on
the conversational subjects of sixteenth-century undergraduates. The
kind of comparison is indicated in the statute; remarks about the
country, the family, the manners, the studies, and the ability, or the
person, of a fellow-student must be avoided. Similarly, at Jesus
College, Cambridge, it is forbidden to compare country to country,
race to race, or science to science, and William of Wykeham and other
founders had to make similar injunctions. The medieval student was
distinctly quarrelsome, and such records as the famous Merton
"scrutiny" of 1339, and investigations by College Visitors, show that
the seniors set the undergraduates a bad example. The statutes of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, provide for two new penalties. An
offending undergraduate might be sentenced to feed by himself, at a
small table in the middle of the Hall, and in aggravated cases to the
monastic penalty of bread and water. An alternative penalty was
detention in the library at the most inconvenient time ("per horam (p. 068)
vel horas cum minime vellet"), and the performance of an imposition to
be shown up in due course. The rough and ready penalty of the birch
is, however, frequently mentioned in the statutes of Corpus and of
other sixteenth-century Colleges. Cardinal Wolsey thought it proper
that an undergraduate should be whipped until he had completed his
twentieth year. At Trinity, Cambridge (where offenders were sociably
flogged before the assembled College on Friday evenings) the age was
eighteen. Dr Caius restricted the rod to scholars who were not adult.
"We call those adults," he says, "who have completed their eighteenth
year. For before that age, both in ancient times and in our own memory,
youth was not accustomed to wear _braccas_, being content with
_tibialia_ reaching to the knees." The stern disciplinarian might find
an excuse for prolonging the whipping age in the Founder's wish that,
"years alone should not make an adult, but along with years, gravity
of deportment and good character." As late as the foundation of
Pembroke College at O