hbishop of
Canterbury; he seems to have taken this degree in the reign of John,
but he had been already teaching secular subjects in the preceding reign
(Richard I's). It is significant of mediaeval Oxford's position as a
pillar of the Church and a champion of liberty, that her first traceable
graduate should be the last Archbishop of Canterbury who was canonized,
and one of the defenders of English liberties against the misgovernment
of Henry III.

[Sidenote: The University a Guild of M.A.s.]

The 'University' of Oxford, like the great sister (or might we say
mother?) school of Paris, was an association of Masters of Arts, and
they alone were its proper members. In our own days, when not more than
half of those who enter the University proceed to the M.A. Degree, and
when only about ten per cent. of them reside for any time after the B.A.
course is ended, this state of things seems inconceivable; but it has
left its trace, even in popular knowledge, in the well-known fact that
M.A.s are exempt from Proctorial jurisdiction; and our degree
terminology is still based upon it. It is the M.A. who is admitted by
the Vice-Chancellor to 'begin', i.e. to teach (_ad incipiendum_), when
he is presented to him, and at Cambridge and in American Universities
the ceremonies at the end of the academic year are called
'Commencement'. What seems an Irish bull is really a survival of the
oldest university arrangements.

[Sidenote: The meaning of the 'Degree'.]

As then the University is a guild of Masters, the degree is the 'step'
by which the distinction of becoming a full member of it is attained.
Gibbon wrote a century ago that 'the use of academical degrees is
visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations, in which an apprentice,
after serving his time, obtains a testimonial of his skill, and his
licence to practise his trade or mystery'. This statement, though
accurate in the main, is misleading; the truth is that the learned body
has not so much borrowed from the 'mechanic' one, as that both have
based their arrangements independently on the same idea.

[Sidenote: A Bachelor of Arts.]

This connexion may be illustrated from the other degree title,
'Bachelor.' If the etymology at present best supported may be accepted,
that honourable term was originally used for a man who worked on a
'cow-strip' of land, i.e. who was assistant of a small cultivator;
whether this be true or not, it at any rate soon came to denote the
appre