aries of Averroes and others, were
translated in my time, and interdicted at Paris up to the year of grace
1237 because of their assertion of the eternity of the world and of time
and because of the book of the divinations by dreams (which is the third
book, De Somniis et Vigiliis) and because of many passages erroneously
translated. Even his logic was slowly received and lectured on. For St.
Edmund, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first in my time who read
the Elements at Oxford. And I have seen Master Hugo, who first read the
book of Posterior Analytics, and I have seen his writing. So there were
but few, considering the multitude of the Latins, who were of any account
in the philosophy of Aristotle; nay, very few indeed, and scarcely any up
to this year of grace 1292."

[Sidenote: The Town]

If we pass from the English University to the English Town we see a
progress as important and hardly less interesting. In their origin our
boroughs were utterly unlike those of the rest of the western world. The
cities of Italy and Provence had preserved the municipal institutions of
their Roman past; the German towns had been founded by Henry the Fowler
with the purpose of sheltering industry from the feudal oppression around
them; the communes of Northern France sprang into existence in revolt
against feudal outrage within their walls. But in England the tradition
of Rome passed utterly away, while feudal oppression was held fairly in
check by the Crown. The English town therefore was in its beginning
simply a piece of the general country, organized and governed precisely
in the same manner as the townships around it. Its existence witnessed
indeed to the need which men felt in those earlier times of mutual help
and protection. The burh or borough was probably a more defensible place
than the common village; it may have had a ditch or mound about it
instead of the quickset-hedge or "tun" from which the township took its
name. But in itself it was simply a township or group of townships where
men clustered whether for trade or defence more thickly than elsewhere.
The towns were different in the circumstances and date of their rise.
Some grew up in the fortified camps of the English invaders. Some dated
from a later occupation of the sacked and desolate Roman towns. Some
clustered round the country houses of king and ealdorman or the walls of
church and monastery. Towns like Bristol were the direct result of trade.
There w