mpetition in early days to attract the largest possible audience, but
later on the University enacted that all fees should be pooled and
equally divided among the teachers. For this (and for other reasons) the
lectures became more and more a mere form, and no real part of a
student's education.

[Sidenote: Cutting Lectures.]

There had been from time immemorial a fixed tariff for 'cutting'[16]
lectures, and there was a further fine of the same amount for failing to
take notes. But the University from time to time tried actually to
enforce attendance. A curious instance of this occurs toward the close
of the reign of Elizabeth; a number of students were solemnly warned
that 'by cutting' lectures, they were incurring the guilt of perjury,
because they had sworn to obey the statutes which required attendance at
lectures. They explained they had thought their 'neglect' to hear
lectures only involved them in the fine and not in 'perjury', and after
this apology they seem to have proceeded to their degrees without
further difficulty.

[Sidenote: Graces.]

In fact there was a growing separation after the fifteenth century,
between the formal requirements for the degree, and the actual
University system; sometimes irreconcilable difficulties arose, e.g.
when two students were (in 1599) summoned to explain why they had not
attended one of the lectures required for the degree, and they presented
the unanswerable excuse that the teacher in question had not lectured,
having himself been excused by the University from the duty of giving
the lecture. In fact the whole system would have been unworkable but for
the power of granting 'graces' or dispensations, which has already been
referred to: how necessary and almost universal these were, may be seen
from the fact that even so conscientious a disciplinarian as Archbishop
Laud, stern alike to himself and to others, was dispensed from observing
all the statutes when he took his D.D. (1608) 'because he was called
away suddenly on necessary business'. We can well believe that Laud
then, as always, was busy, but there were other students who got their
'graces' with much less excuse. Modern students may well envy the good
fortune of the brothers Carey from Exeter College, who (in 1614) were
dispensed because 'being shortly about to depart from the University,
they desired to take with them the B.A. degree as a benediction from
their Alma Mater, the University'.

[Sidenote: The New Co