Fitz James, a great helper in that
work, was warden of Merton College; but ere long, after it was
finished, one tempest in a night so defaced the same that it left few
pinnacles standing about the church and steeple, which since that time
have never been repaired. There were sometime four and twenty parish
churches in the town and suburbs; but now there are scarcely sixteen.
There have been also 1200 burgesses, of which 400 dwelt in the
suburbs; and so many students were there in the time of Henry the
Third that he allowed them twenty miles compass about the town for
their provision of victuals.

The common schools of Cambridge also are far more beautiful than those
of Oxford, only the Divinity School of Oxford excepted, which for fine
and excellent workmanship cometh next the mould of the King's Chapel
in Cambridge, than the which two, with the Chapel that King Henry the
Seventh did build at Westminster, there are not (in my opinion) made
of lime and stone three more notable piles within the compass of
Europe.

In all the other things there is so great equality between these two
universities as no man can imagine how to set down any greater, so
that they seem to be the body of one well-ordered commonwealth, only
divided by distance of place and not in friendly consent and orders.
In speaking therefore of the one I cannot but describe the other; and
in commendation of the first I cannot but extol the latter; and, so
much the rather, for that they are both so dear unto me as that I
cannot readily tell unto whether of them I owe the most good-will.
Would to God my knowledge were such as that neither of them might have
cause to be ashamed of their pupil, or my power so great that I might
worthily requite them both for those manifold kindnesses that I have
received of them! But to leave these things, and proceed with other
more convenient to my purpose.

The manner to live in these universities is not as in some other of
foreign countries we see daily to happen, where the students are
enforced for want of such houses to dwell in common inns, and taverns,
without all order or discipline. But in these our colleges we live in
such exact order, and under so precise rules of government, as that
the famous learned man Erasmus of Rotterdam, being here among us fifty
years passed, did not let to compare the trades in living of students
in these two places, even with the very rules and orders of the
ancient monks, affirming mor