hile it still enforces (at least in theory) academic dress
on its undergraduates, as to whom the mediaeval University had little to
say.

The Laudian Statutes here as elsewhere form the transition from the
arrangements of Pre-Reformation Oxford to those of our own day. They
enforce (on all alike) dress of a proper colour, short hair, and
abstinence from 'absurdus ille et fastuosus mos' of walking abroad in
fancy boots (_ocreae_); only while the graduate is fined 6_s._ 8_d._ for
offending, the undergraduate ('if his age be suitable') suffers '_poena
corporalis_' at the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors.

Perhaps the following general points may be made as to University dress
in the olden times.

[Sidenote: (1) University Dress clerical.]

As all members of the University were _ipso facto_ clerks, their dress
had to correspond; the marks of clerical dress were that it was to be of
a certain length (later it was specified that it should reach the heels,
_talaris_), and that it should be closed in front, but there was great
licence as to colour; the 'black' or 'subfusc' prescribed by the
Laudian Statutes is the result of the asceticism of the Reformation, and
was unknown in Oxford before the sixteenth century. We have in the wills
of students and in the inventories of their properties, abundant
evidence that our mediaeval predecessors wore garments suitable to
'Merrie Englande', e.g. of green, blue or blood-colour. Sometimes the
founder of a college left directions what 'livery' all his students
should wear; e.g. Robert Eglesfield prescribed for the fellows of
Queen's College that they were to dine in Hall in purple cloaks, the
Doctors wearing these trimmed with fur, while the M.A.s wore theirs
'plain'; the colour was 'to suit the dignity of their position and to be
like the blood of The Lord'. Cambridge colleges still in some cases
prescribe for their undergraduates gowns of a special colour or cut.

One curious survival of the 'clerkship' of all students is the
requirement of the white tie in all University examinations and in the
degree ceremony. The 'bands', which (to quote Dr. Rashdall) 'are merely
a clerical collar', have disappeared from the necks of all lay members
of the University below the degree of Doctor, except the Vice-Chancellor
and the Proctors; the dress of the latter is the full-dress of an
ordinary M.A. in the seventeenth century, and preserves picturesque old
features which have been l