provision
for breakfast led to its being taken in private rooms and not in Hall,
and this is the humble origin of the College breakfast party.

The number of occupants of a single room varied in different colleges.
Special provision was made in later College statutes for the Head of
the College; at New College he was given (for the first time) a separate
establishment and an allowance of plate and kitchen utensils; he (p. 062)
was to dine in Hall only on some twenty great Feasts of the Church,
and to sit at a separate table on these occasions. Henry VI. followed
this precedent at King's, and elsewhere we find that the Head of a
College is to have "principalem mansionem" with garden and stabling
for the horses, without which it was not becoming that he should
travel on College business. It was generally the duty of the Head to
apportion the rooms among other members of the College, and to see
that the juniors were under proper supervision. At Peterhouse, and in
many other colleges, there were to be two in each chamber. When
William of Wykeham built on a large scale, he ordered that there
should be four occupants in the ground-floor rooms and three in the
first-floor rooms. At King's, the numbers were three in ground-floor
rooms and two in first-floor rooms. At Magdalen, the numbers were the
same as at New College, but two of the beds in the upper rooms and one
in the lower were to be "lectuli rotales, _Trookyll beddys_ vulgariter
appellati." Separate beds were usually provided, though sometimes boys
under fourteen or fifteen years of age were denied this luxury. The
bedrooms were also studies; at Oxford there was no general sitting-room,
except in monastic colleges, though Cambridge College statutes speak
of a "parlura," corresponding to the modern parlour or combination
room. Each of the occupants of a room in New College was the (p. 063)
proprietor of a small window, at which he worked, probably at some
"study" or desk like the old Winchester "toys." The rooms had four
windows and four "studiorum loca," and the general type of a College
chamber, after the foundation of New College, was a room with one
large window, and two, three, or four small windows for "studies."

A large proportion of the care of statute-makers was devoted to the
prohibition of amusements. The statutes of Peterhouse forbade dogs or
falcons, "for if one can have them in the House, all will want them,
and so there will arise a constant how