ost elsewhere.

[Sidenote: (2) The Cope and the Gown.]

The proper dress of the mediaeval Master, though probably an
undergraduate could also wear it, was the _cappa_ or cope; this at
Oxford was usually black in colour, but Doctors had quite early (i.e. in
the time of the Edwards) adopted as the colour for it some shade of red,
thus beginning the custom which still survives. The scarlet 'habit',
worn at Convocations by Oxford Doctors over their ordinary gowns,
retains the old name '_cappa_', but the shape has been completely
altered. The sister University, however, still preserves the old shape;
the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor presides at their degree ceremonies in a
sleeveless scarlet cloak, lined with miniver, which exactly corresponds
to the fourteenth-century picture of our Chancellor receiving the
charter from Edward III. The gown, the 'putting on' of which is now the
distinguishing mark of the taking of the B.A. or M.A., is simply the
survival of a mediaeval garment which was not even clerical, the long
gown (_toga_) or cassock, which was worn under the _cappa_. The dress of
the 'Blues' at Christ's Hospital preserves the gown in an earlier stage
of development. The modern usage which gives the gown of the B.A.
sleeves, while that of an M.A. has them cut away, has in some
unexplained way grown out of a similar usage as to the mediaeval
_cappa_.

[Sidenote: (3) The Hood.]

The mark, however, which specially distinguished the degree was the
hood, as to which the University was always strict, assigning the proper
material and the proper colour[26] to that of each faculty. The hood was
not a mere adornment or a badge, it was an article of dress. Originally
it seems to have been attached to the _cappa_, and, as its name implies,
was used for covering (the head) when required. Its practical purpose is
quaintly implied in the books of the Chancellor and the Proctors (sub
anno 1426), where it is provided that 'whereas reason bids that the
varieties of costume should correspond to the ordering of the seasons,
and whereas the Festival of Easter in its due course is akin from its
nearness to summer,' it is henceforth allowed that from Easter to All
Saints' day, 'graduates may wear silken hoods,' instead of fur ones,
'old custom notwithstanding.' The M.A. hood, even in its present
mutilated form, still presents survivals of the time when it was a real
head covering, survivals which should prevent those who wear it from
putt