asters.

The degrees which Oxford and Cambridge conferred in Grammar did not
involve residence or entitle the recipients to a vote in Convocation;
but the conferment was accompanied by ceremonies which were almost
parodies of the solemn proceedings of graduation or inception in a
recognised Faculty, a birch taking the place of a book as a symbol of
the power and authority entrusted to the graduand. A sixteenth-century
Esquire Bedel of Cambridge left, for the benefit of his successors,
details of the form for the "enteryng of a Master in Gramer." The
"Father" of the Faculty of Grammar (at Cambridge the mysterious
individual known as the "Master of Glomery") brought his "sons" to St
Mary's Church for eight o'clock mass. "When mass is done, fyrst shall
begynne the acte in Gramer. The Father shall have hys sete made before
the Stage for Physyke (one of the platforms erected in the church for
doctors of the different faculties, etc.) and shall sytte alofte under
the stage for Physyke. The Proctour shall say, Incipiatis. When the
Father hath argyude as shall plese the Proctour, the Bedeyll in (p. 137)
Arte shall bring the Master of Gramer to the Vyce-chancelar, delyveryng
hym a Palmer wyth a Rodde, whych the Vyce-chancelar shall gyve to the
seyde Master in Gramer, and so create hym Master. Then shall the
Bedell purvay for every master in Gramer a shrewde Boy, whom the
master in Gramer shall bete openlye in the Scolys, and the master in
Gramer shall give the Boy a Grote for Hys Labour, and another Grote to
hym that provydeth the Rode and the Palmer &c. de singulis. And thus
endythe the Acte in that Facultye." We know of the existence of
similar ceremonies at Oxford. "Had the ambition to take these degrees
in Grammar been widely diffused," says Dr Rashdall, "the demand for
whipping boys might have pressed rather hardly upon the youth of
Oxford; but very few of them are mentioned in the University
Register."

The basis of the medieval curriculum in Arts is to be found in the
Seven Liberal Arts of the Dark Ages, divided into the _Trivium_
(Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic) and the _Quadrivium_ (Music,
Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy). The _Quadrivium_ was of
comparatively little importance; Geometry and Music received small
attention; and Arithmetic, and Astronomy were at first chiefly useful
for finding the date of Easter; but the introduction of mathematical
learning from Arabian sources in the thirteenth century greatly