existence
throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, and was scarcely
recognised as a _studium generale_ until the bull of John XXII. in 1318
made its future position secure. In early days the university owed
nothing to endowments, buildings, social prestige, or tradition. The
two essentials was the living voice of the graduate teacher and the
concourse of students desirous to be taught. Hence migrations were
common and stability only gradually established. When, late in Henry
III.'s reign, the chancellor, Walter of Merton, desired to set up a
permanent institution for the encouragement of poor students, he
hesitated whether to establish it at Oxford, or Cambridge, or in his
own Surrey village. Oxford, though patriots coupled it with Paris and
Bologna, only gradually rose into repute. But before the end of Henry
III.'s reign it had won an assured place among the great universities
of western Europe, though lagging far behind that of the supreme
schools of Paris.

The growing fame of the university of Oxford was a matter of national
importance. Down to the early years of the thirteenth century a young
English clerk who was anxious to study found his only career abroad,
and was too often cut off altogether from his mother country. Among the
last of this type were the Paris mathematician, John of Holywood or
Halifax, Robert Curzon, cardinal, legate, theologian, and crusader, and
Alexander of Hales. Stephen Langton, who did important work in revising
the text of the Vulgate, might well have been one of those lost to
England but for the wisdom of Innocent III who restored him, in the
fulness of his reputation and powers, to the service of the English
Church. Not many years younger than Langton was his successor Edmund of
Abingdon, but the difference was enough to make the younger primate a
student of the Oxford schools in early life. Though he left Oxford for
Paris, Edmund returned to an active career in England, when experience
convinced him of the vanity of scholastic success. Bishop Grosseteste,
another early Oxford teacher of eminence, probably studied at Paris,
for so late as 1240 he held up to the Oxford masters of theology the
example of their Paris brethren for their imitation. The double
allegiance of Edmund and Grosseteste was typical. A long catalogue of
eminent names adorned the annals of Oxford in the thirteenth century,
but the most distinguished of her earlier sons were drawn away from her
by the superio