rned red in shame, about a wife expecting
to have half of what her husband owned. Paper supplemented
parchment, so there were more books.

Political songs and poems were written about the evil times of
King Edward II, the military triumphs of King Edward III, and the
complaints of the poor against their oppressors, such as "Song of
the Husbandman". John Gower wrote moralizing poems on the
villein's revolt, the sins of the clergy and attorneys, and the
bad rule of King Richard II, who in 1377 succeeded Edward III.
Robin Hood ballads were popular. The minstrel, who was a honorable
person, replaced the troubadour of older times.

There were many colleges at Oxford and Cambridge due to the
prohibition of gifts to the church. Laymen instead of
ecclesiastics were appointed as Chancellor. The Masters at Oxford
got rid of ecclesiastical supervision by a bishop and archdeacon
by 1368. One could be admitted as a student at age thirteen. The
rate of maintenance for a student was 10d. weekly.

A Bachelor of Arts degree was granted after four years of study
and an oral exam. Required reading in 1340 for the Bachelor's
Degree was the new logic of Aristotle ("Prior and Posterior
Analytics" e.g. on syllogistic logic and deduction, the "Topics",
or the "Sophistical Refutations", e.g. logical fallacies such as
from 'All A are B' to 'All B are A'), and a selection from these
Aristotle works on physics: "Of Heaven and Earth", "On the Soul",
"Of meteors", "Of Birth and Decay", or "Of Feeling and What is
Felt" with "Of Memory and Recollection" and "Of Sleep and Waking",
or "Of the Movement of Animals" with "Of Minor Points in Natural
History".

A Master of Arts degree could be awarded after three more years of
study and teaching. A Doctorate degrees in theology required ten
more years of study. A Doctorate in civil or canon law required
eight more years. A man with a degree in canon law who wanted to
practice in a certain bishop's court had to first satisfy this
bishop of his competence.

Another source of legal learning was in London, where the guilds
gave rise to the Inns of Court. They used the Register of Writs,
the case law of the Year Books, and disputation to teach their
students.

For a doctorate in medicine from Oxford or Cambridge, five more
years plus two years of practice were required. Surgery was not
taught because it was considered manual labor, and there was some
feeling that it was a sacrilege and dishonorable. Uri