scholar of
Peckwater Inn, is fined six shillings and eightpence for breaking the
head of Thomas Walker, manciple of Pauline Hall, and Thomas Walker is
fined the like sum for drawing his sword on Hordene and for gambling.
In 1433, two scholars, guilty of attacking Master Thomas Rygby in
Bagley Wood and stealing twelve shillings and sevenpence from him,
fail to appear, and are expelled from the University, their goods
(estimated to be worth about thirteen shillings) being (p. 098)
confiscated. In 1457, four scholars are caught entering with weapons
into a warren or park to hunt deer and rabbits; they are released on
taking an oath that, while they are students of the University, they
will not trespass again, in closed parks or warrens. In 1452, a
scholar of Haburdaysh Hall is imprisoned for using threatening
language to a tailor, and is fined twelvepence and imprisoned; the
tailor insults the prisoner and is fined six shillings and eightpence.
We have quoted instances of undergraduate offences, but the evil-doers
are by no means invariably young students, _e.g._ in 1457 the Vicar of
St Giles has to take an oath to keep the peace, his club is forfeited,
and he is fined two shillings; and in the same year the Master of St
John's Hospital, who has been convicted of divers enormous offences,
is expelled the University for breaking prison.

[Footnote 1: The prison was called "Bocardo"
because, like the mood known as "Bocardo" in the
syllogism, it was difficult to get out of.]

The increased stringency of disciplinary regulations at Oxford in the
end of the medieval period is best illustrated by the statutes which,
in the fifteenth century, the University enforced upon members of the
unendowed Halls. Students who were not members of a College lived, for
the most part, in one of the numerous Halls which, up to the
Reformation, were so important a feature of the University. A code of
these statutes, printed for the first time by Dr Rashdall, shows that
the liberty of the earlier medieval undergraduate had largely (p. 099)
disappeared, and that the life of a resident in a Hall, in the end of
the fifteenth century, was almost as much governed by statute and
regulation as if he were the partaker of a founder's bounty. He must
hear mass and say matins and vespers every day, under pain of a fine
of a penny, and attend certain services on feast days. His table