ess at this time." And by such means the meaning of many a good law
is left unexecuted, malefactors emboldened; and many a poor man turned out
of that which he hath sweat and taken great pains toward the maintenance
of himself and his poor children and family.

CHAPTER XXV.

OF UNIVERSITIES.

[1577, Book II., Chapter 6; 1587, Book II., Chapter 3.]

There have been heretofore, and at sundry times, divers famous
universities in this island, and those even in my days not altogether
forgotten, as one at Bangor, erected by Lucius, and afterward converted
into a monastery, not by Congellus (as some write), but by Pelagius the
monk. The second at Caerleon-upon-Usk, near to the place where the river
doth fall into the Severn, founded by King Arthur. The third at Thetford,
wherein were six hundred students, in the time of one Rond, sometime king
of that region. The fourth at Stamford, suppressed by Augustine the monk.
And likewise other in other places, as Salisbury, Eridon or Cricklade,
Lachlade, Reading, and Northampton; albeit that the two last rehearsed
were not authorised, but only arose to that name by the departure of the
students from Oxford in time of civil dissension unto the said towns,
where also they continued but for a little season. When that of Salisbury
began I cannot tell; but that it flourished most under Henry the Third and
Edward the First I find good testimony by the writers, as also by the
discord which fell, 1278, between the chancellor for the scholars there on
the one part and William the archdeacon on the other, whereof you shall
see more in the chronology here following. In my time there are three
noble universities in England--to wit, one at Oxford, the second at
Cambridge, and the third in London; of which the first two are the most
famous, I mean Cambridge and Oxford, for that in them the use of the
tongues, philosophy, and the liberal sciences, besides the profound
studies of the civil law, physic, and theology, are daily taught and had:
whereas in the latter the laws of the realm are only read and learned by
such as give their minds unto the knowledge of the same. In the first
there are not only divers goodly houses builded four square for the most
part of hard freestone or brick, with great numbers of lodgings and
chambers in the same for students, after a sumptuous sort, through the
exceeding liberality of kings, queens, bishops, noblemen and ladies of the
land; but also large living