This paper contains some extracts from my notebooks on the way in which university and college discipline was maintained in former days at Cambridge. The records on the subject are scanty, but I think the facts are worth putting together in a connected form. There is no reason to suppose that the practices of different colleges varied materially, and if in the later period I have taken examples from the records of Trinity it is only because I have had easier access to them.

In the history of university discipline and social customs abrupt changes are not to be expected, and none such are noticeable in the transition from the medieval period, circ. 1200 to 1525, through the renaissance, circ. 1525 to 1640, and the period of stagnation, circ. 1660 to 1820, to the present age of reconstruction and extension. I begin naturally with discipline in medieval Cambridge.

In the early days of the University the students lodged in the town and were of all ages from twelve or thirteen upwards. Except in strictly academic matters, there was little or no supervision of their conduct, and, outside the schools, grave disorders [195] were common; the University, however, claimed power, when it chose, to take cognizance of all offences contrary to good manners, and at any rate in later days did so in serious cases. The regulations at Cambridge and Oxford were so similar that we may fairly draw illustrations from either University, and the records of the chancellor’s court at Oxford in the fifteenth century show that fines, imprisonment, and, in extreme cases, expulsion were customary penalties for serious offences against university regulations and customs. I have no doubt that earlier records, if extant, would be of the same general character.

The first college to be founded at Cambridge was Peterhouse which took its final form in 1284, and during the next century several other similar Houses were established: these societies were intended for selected scholars. The problem of the control of other students was met in the course of the fourteenth century by preventing them from living in private lodgings chosen by themselves, and thenceforth, throughout the middle ages, those who came from a distance were generally required to reside in private hostels run by masters of arts on lines somewhat similar to boarding houses in public schools to-day. Besides the lay and secular students accommodated in colleges, private hostels, and at their homes, there were also in the medieval University a considerable [196] number of “religious” students who were housed in monasteries or monastic hostels. Some of the colleges in later medieval times received as paying members a few wealthy pensioners, parochial priests in middle life, and even monks from distant convents, but probably the number of such favoured students was never large. With the establishment of colleges and the organization of private hostels discipline improved; inside their walls as well as in the monastic hostels it is probable that order was well maintained, but outside them, at least among the students at private hostels, discipline was left to the university authorities who did little or nothing in the matter.

The colleges took seriously their responsibilities for discipline, and all things contrary to good manners and morals were prohibited. For the gravest offences, such as contumacy, crimes of violence, and heresy, expulsion was usually ordered. Among less serious delinquencies, explicitly forbidden and therefore we may assume not unknown, were bringing strangers into the house, sleeping out, and absence without leave; using insulting language, drunkenness, gambling, and frequenting taverns; keeping company with loose women; throwing missiles and carrying arms; and the keeping of dogs, hawks, falcons, and ferrets. In the regulations of many colleges, a course of study was indicated, and directions [197] given that idleness was to be punished. Regular attendance at religious exercises was assumed, and was explicitly directed on certain occasions: I suppose that students performed such duties without much external pressure, and I know no record of the infliction of any penalty in early times for non-attendance. In the middle ages Latin was the language generally enforced, though occasionally French was permitted; this remained the rule until the seventeenth century. Conversation during dinner and supper was forbidden in many colleges, and of course was impossible in those cases where some book was then read aloud. At King’s College, jumping and ball throwing, and at Clare College meetings in bedrooms for feasting and talking were also forbidden. At a somewhat later date Caius ordered his students to be in bed by eight o’clock at night, but they made up for this by rising very early in the morning. In general the punishment for minor faults was left to the discretion of the authorities. This was only reasonable, for a medieval college was a mixed community of lads and men, the members being of all ages from about fourteen or fifteen upwards; and rules enforced on boys of fourteen could not be applied to men of twenty-three or twenty-four, who were in fact already taking part in the teaching of the junior scholars.

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For all members, the ultimate penalty for the gravest offences was expulsion. For less serious misconduct, fines, restrictions on the food supplied, impositions, and confinement within the walls, are believed to have been common penalties, at any rate for adolescents; but, as I explain below, I think that corporal punishment was constantly inflicted on non-adults in lieu of a fine, which indeed boys would have had considerable difficulty in paying. As far as the younger students and the bachelors at colleges were concerned the extant regulations in regard to their exercises, amusements, incomings and outgoings, suggest that they were treated much like the junior and senior boys in a rather strict public school in the first half of the nineteenth century; and perhaps the senior graduate members were treated somewhat like residents in colleges at the same period.

Membership of a college was a privilege confined, in general, to scholars specially nominated, and no doubt the standards of work and discipline there were higher than in the private hostels. Naturally we know less of life in these hostels, but it is likely that disciplinary rules were originally made by or with the approval of the elder residents, and that the normal discipline in them was of the same general character as that exercised in colleges, though, as the members paid for themselves, money fines were [199] possible and usual penalties, especially in the case of the older members. There must have been more variety in the discipline of hostels than of colleges, and we may safely say that some hostels were well conducted, others not so.

It is possible that finally the University claimed the right to examine and supervise the internal regulations of the hostels. A set of rules, thus enforced on an unendowed hall at Oxford in the fifteenth century, has been discovered and printed by Rashdall: they do not differ much from those usual at a college, except that some of the penalties specified are pecuniary, and that the principal was given explicit permission, if he wished, to flog a student, even though the lad’s own master (i.e. the master to whom he had been apprenticed) had certified that he had already corrected him or was willing to do so.

Was corporal punishment commonly used in medieval times? Until recently it was accepted without argument that this was the case; and certainly in the fifteenth century and later when we get detailed information on the subject, the younger students were subject to it. Rashdall, however, has argued that the absence of its mention in earlier times implies that the birch was unknown in the ordinary university regulations till towards the end of the sixteenth century or later, though he admits in various places that glomerels were liable to it: his [200] authority is accepted by Rait. It is true that in the statutes given in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, birching is not mentioned explicitly, but, since the punishments for petty offences are rarely specified in detail, this proves nothing. In the fifteenth century corporal punishment is mentioned as a recognized penalty. For instance, the statutes given by HenryVI to King’s College, Cambridge, prescribed that scholars and young fellows might be punished by stripes, and a year or two later, the statutes of Magdalen College, Oxford, directed that the demies should be subject to flogging. In later regulations of various colleges, to some of which I refer below, whipping is mentioned as a recognized punishment, but often as one to which only the younger students were liable.

I have already argued that in medieval colleges discipline must have varied according to the age of the offender, and I conjecture that adults were never regularly subject to corporal punishment, but that boys were always so, and that the use of the rod was regarded as needing no explicit statutable authority. Its employment was no strange thing, for adult offenders against the law, apprentices, and boys at school, were all flogged at times. And what else, it has been well asked, could the authorities do with a troublesome boy of fourteen? In general a fine was impossible for he had no pocket-money. [201] Most of the colleges were designed for poor scholars, and in such foundations usually the allowance for commons was so small that without risk to health any reduction for more than a day or two was difficult; little leisure was allowed for recreation or exercise, and thus heavy impositions were impossible; and confinement to the precincts of the House was so common that gating was no punishment. A lad of seventeen or eighteen had more liberty and privileges, and in general on reaching that age was as safe from the chance of corporal punishment as was a boy of the same age at a public school fifty years ago.

Somewhat similar arguments apply to the private hostels, and the regulations of an unendowed hall at Oxford, to which I have already referred, show that the use of the rod or birch was recognized there. If as I suppose is likely, Clement Paston was at a private hostel, we have a definite instance of the similar use of the rod at Cambridge, for among the Paston letters is one dated 28January 1458 from Dame Agnes Paston, about her boy, Clement, in which she says “prey Grenefeld to send me feythfully word by wrytyn who (how) Clement Paston hathe do his dever i lerning. And if he hathe nought do well, nor wyll nought amend, prey him that he wyll trewly belassch (i.e. flog) him tyll he wyll amend, and so ded the last Maystur and ye best, that ev’ [202] he hadd at Cambrege.” Clement was born in 1442, so he was then fifteen years old.

I asserted above that school-boys in the middle ages were liable to the birch or cane. I suppose this will not be questioned, but by way of parenthesis I add that this liability seems to have been a well-established practice for centuries. It goes back to classical times for in the schools of Rome the less serious offences were punished by the cane applied to the hand, and graver faults by the birch applied to the back; and there is a curious fresco at Herculaneum of the application of the latter to a boy, horsed by one schoolfellow and with his feet held by another. The royal whipping boys in the courts of Western Europe remind us that, at least vicariously, princes were subject to this discipline as well as commoners.

In more recent times the deeds of Busby and Keate at Westminster and Eton respectively are preserved in tradition, while the reputation of Udall at an earlier time, circ. 1530, may be gathered from the remarks of Thomas Tusser, a choirboy at StPaul’s Cathedral, who subsequently went to Eton: Tusser says, “From Paul’s I went, to Eton sent, To learn straightways the Latin phrase Where fifty-three stripes giv’n to me, at once I had. For faults but small, or none at all, It came to pass thus beat I was.” The similar [203] vigour of Udall’s successor, Cox, is mentioned by Ascham. In short, the old saw: “Spare the rod, and spoil the child, Solomon said in accents mild, Be it boy or be it maid, Whip ’em and wallop ’em Solomon said” represented the current belief and practice of former days; though the dictum attributed to that king is stronger than the passage in Proverbs, xiii, 24 warrants.

In the sixteenth century the colleges opened their doors to the admission of pensioners and fellow-commoners. Collegiate teaching and arrangements were superior to those of the private hostels, and before the middle of the century the latter had disappeared: their revival was rendered impossible by a regulation that membership of the University should be confined to those who were members of a college. Shortly afterwards it became the custom not to require residence for degrees after the baccalaureate, and thus a course limited to three or four years became usual for the average student. These changes were of far-reaching importance.

In the course of this century new statutes were given to the University and colleges, and subsequently we possess records, fairly complete, of the domestic life of students. Early in the following century, the average age of entry began to rise, and before its close, it had become common for students to defer entry until about seventeen years old.

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University decrees regulating the conduct of students in many matters now appear, notably one in 1595 by Goad, then vice-chancellor, which gives a summary of what was expected. Expulsion, suspension from degrees, and refusal of leave to graduate until after a specified time, were normal punishments for serious offences, for trivial misconduct fines are now constantly prescribed, and physical punishments for non-adults are also directed in many cases.

In colleges, the Tudor statutes generally enjoined good conduct on all students. The regulations about the punishment of offences were mostly concerned with grave matters for which admonitions, and finally expulsions, were the recognized punishments. Penalties for the non-performance of religious exercises now appear: thus, at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and at Balliol College, Oxford, whipping was prescribed as a penalty for absence from chapel, though probably restricted to the younger students; so too at Peterhouse, students over eighteen who were absent from prayers were to be fined, while younger students so offending were to be deprived of dinner, and if persistent in their neglect flogged in hall.

As in medieval times, the authorities were generally left a free hand in settling the regulations for the maintenance of normal discipline. Probably [205] fines, impositions, restrictions on the food supplied, and gatings continued to be ordinarily used. Reading the bible aloud at meal times in hall, dining apart on bread and water, and being deprived of commons, are definitely mentioned in the 1520 statutes of St John’s College, Cambridge, as possible penalties; similarly at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, being compelled to eat alone at a small table in the middle of the hall and restriction to bread and water are specified as suitable punishments.

The use of the birch was now constantly prescribed, though probably in practice always confined to lads. Thus, at Christ’s College, Cambridge, a whipping for lads and a fine for adults; and at Brasenose, Oxford, a fine or a flogging, at the discretion of the principal, were statutable punishments for various faults, including at the latter College the making of odious comparisons in conversation. At other Houses too, for instance, at Corpus Christi, Oxford, Wolsey (Christ Church), Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, the use of the cane or birch is sanctioned in the case of lads. I have no doubt this was also the general rule in earlier days, and nothing in the Tudor codes indicates that any material change was made in the existing practice, but on the whole I conjecture that the regulations were more humane, and I am inclined to think, contrary to Rashdall’s [206] view, that discipline was less severe after the renaissance than before it. In colleges the deans were and are the chief officers responsible for discipline; in the University, the proctors.

A part of the fifth chapter of the Trinity statutes of 1560 relating to the office of deans may be summarized as indicating what was then customary, or at any rate desired, in the matter of chapel attendance and in certain questions of petty discipline. The statute, which is in Latin, is to the following effect:

In every community regard should be paid to correctness of morals and general probity of life, accordingly there shall be two deans to give their sedulous attention to these objects; at least one of such deans shall be a bachelor of divinity and chosen from the eight senior fellows, and the other, a master of arts or a bachelor of divinity.

The deans shall provide for the fitting performance of public worship; see that all fellows, scholars, pensioners, sizars, and subsizars attend on Saints’ days and Sundays at morning and evening prayers, the litany, the communion, and sermons; and see that the same persons are on other days regularly present at prayers between five and six o’clock in the morning. Every fellow who is absent shall be fined three half-pence, and if he comes in late or goes out early, one half-penny. The fine for a bachelor scholar who is absent shall be one penny, and for one who comes in late or goes out early, one half-penny. Every undergraduate scholar, and every pensioner, sizar, and subsizar who is absent shall, if his age exceeds eighteen years be fined one half-penny, and if he comes in late or goes out early, one farthing; but if such student has not attained this age, he shall be chastised [207] with rods in the hall on the following Friday. Those are to be deemed as coming late who at evening prayers arrive after the first psalm; at morning prayers, after the Venite; at the Litany, after the words O Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity; and at the communion service after the recital of the commandments: anyone who, during service, remains in the antechapel is to be punished as if he had been absent.

Each week on Friday, at seven o’clock in the evening, the deans shall chastise non-adult offenders. All scholars (bachelors excepted), pensioners, sizars, and subsizars shall be present during the infliction of such corporal punishment, and anyone who does not answer to his name when called, and does not stay until all the punishments are finished, shall, if an adult, be fined one penny, and if non-adult be flogged on the next day.

Each week on Thursday, the deans shall appoint two monitors from among the bachelor scholars for noting offences of bachelors; and six monitors [from among the undergraduate scholars], two for noting offences of undergraduates at public worship, and four for noting those who fail to speak Latin: the monitors shall prepare lists of all who offend in these particulars. The deans shall also appoint each week six scholars and four sizars for service at the fellows’ table, and one sizar for the organ.

In order to ensure the decorous celebration of public worship, the deans shall bring with them to the first vespers of every festival a written schedule of the duties of everyone concerned in that festival, and shall further appoint an inquisitor who shall remind everyone of the duty so assigned to him. Anyone who shall fail in such duty shall, if a non-adult, be whipt, and, if an adult, be fined fourpence.

One half of all fines inflicted shall go to the College, the other half shall be kept by the deans.

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The Tudor statutes generally remained in force till the middle of the nineteenth century, though in time the practices of the colleges came to differ materially from what was there directed. Briefly we may say that in the sixteenth century the standard of medieval discipline and study sank; but in the early years of the seventeenth century things improved until the civil disturbances threw academic work into confusion. With the establishment of the commonwealth the age of entry rose, and thus the use of corporal and puerile punishments died out, and with the disappearance of boys as members of the University, rules intended only for young lads became obsolete and inoperative. Most of the students henceforth were adolescent. The few who were younger were dealt with like school-boys, but the comparison is rather with school-boys of recent years than with those of their own period.

As far back as Sir Simon D’Ewes’s time—and he entered Cambridge in 1618—the majority of the students were regarded as responsible, and capable of conducting themselves rationally. They reflected the virtues and foibles of their time, but they were a select class, and compare favourably in manners and morals with their contemporaries elsewhere. Almost without exception they speak warmly of their development in college from lads to young men, of friendships formed with their elders as well as their [209] contemporaries, of the abiding influence of the place, and of their affection for it.

From the restoration to the regency was a period of stagnation. Discipline deteriorated, and if we may trust contemporary accounts drunkenness and immorality were far from uncommon. No doubt there were always some residents who maintained high traditions and ideals, but on the whole the records of the social life prevalent then at Cambridge and Oxford make but sorry reading.

The sixteenth century codes indicate lofty aims, but statutes and rules are not always observed literally, and it may be thought that those mentioned represented only old customs, perhaps already obsolete, or what was deemed desirable but was not enforced. It may be well then to turn to contemporary evidence, to regulations passed on specific occasions, and to records of definite punishments—though we can expect the latter to have been preserved only in grave cases, and cannot hope to learn from them much about discipline in petty matters.

Contemporary evidence would serve us best if we could get it, but the diarists and letter-writers are mostly silent on the subject. From this, however, I conclude that generally the disciplinary regulations were thought sensible. Life in the University may have been hard and probably was so, but I do [210] not believe that discipline was unreasonable. All the evidence is to the contrary. Thus the above-mentioned Tusser, a student of no special brilliancy, who entered at Trinity Hall in the early half of the sixteenth century speaks thankfully of leaving school, and says: “To Cambridge thence ... I got at last, There joy I felt, there trim I dwelt, There heaven from hell, I shifted well, With learned men, a number then, the time I passed.”

Coming now to definite punishments, I mention successively corporal punishments, such as birching, the use of the stocks, and stanging; fines, direct and indirect; deprivation of days or standing; gatings; impositions; declaratory confessions; and rustications and expulsions.

On 8May 1572, the Vice-Chancellor, Whitgift, issued an order which is so detailed that I write it at length. Here it is:

If any scholar shall go into any river, pool, or other water in the county of Cambridge; by day or night, to swim or wash, he shall, if under the degree of bachelor of arts, for the first offence be sharply and severely whipped publicly [211] in the common hall of the College in which he dwells, in the presence of all the fellows, scholars, and others dwelling in the College, and on the next day shall be again openly whipped in the public school, where he was or ought to be an auditor, before all the auditors, by one of the proctors or some other assigned by the Vice-Chancellor, and for the second offence every such delinquent shall be expelled his College and the University for ever. But if he shall be a bachelor of arts, then for the first offence he shall be put in the stocks for a whole day, in the common hall of his College, and shall, before he is liberated, pay 10s towards the commons of the College, and for the second offence shall be expelled his College and the University. And if he shall be a master of arts, or bachelor of law, physic or music, or of superior degree, he shall be severely punished, at the judgment and discretion of the Master of his College.

From this it is clear that at that time undergraduates, even of mature age, were liable to be flogged as a part of the ordinary discipline of the University and College, but probably it was unusual to inflict the penalty.

Thirty years later, after the disturbances of 20February 1607, following the performance of a comedy in King’s College, an order was issued that thereafter every ringleader in any similar disturbances should be banished from the University: and every less responsible offender should, if a graduate, pay for the harm done, be suspended from his degree, and for one year refused leave to take a further degree; and if a non-graduate should for [212] one year be refused leave to graduate, and further, if non-adult, be corrected in the schools by the rod, and, if adult, make an open confession of his guilt in the schools: also the offender if not a scholar should be set in the stocks at the bull ring in the market place. Here, it will be noticed, the punishment by the rod is restricted to those non-adulti.

In a list of punishments inflicted at Corpus Christi College in 1622, quoted by Lamb, admonitions, fines, suspensions, and whippings are mentioned. Even as late as 1648 there is a record of “Benton per Tutorem suum Magistrum Johnson virgis castigandis.”

In 1648 an undergraduate bible-clerk of Peterhouse, age about seventeen, Tobias Conyers by name was “corrected publicly”—which, I take it, means flogged—for toasting the king. But times were abnormal, and if Conyers ventured into the stirring field of politics, he had to take the consequences.

The liability to a flogging still existed after the restoration. Thus in the Poor Scholar, by R.Nevile, London, 1662, there are references to it in Actii, Scene6, and Actv, Scene4, as being still in use in colleges though whether adults were so liable is uncertain. If the author’s statements refer to contemporary matters and are trustworthy it [213] would seem that the punishment was then common, the culprits being mounted on barrels, and the flogging inflicted at the butteries. The birch was also still occasionally used in university discipline, for on 20March 1674, the vice-chancellor ordered Ellethorpe of StJohn’s, and Hodges of Sidney Sussex to be whipped for having been rude to the junior proctor, Peter Parham, of Caius College: neither of the offenders had matriculated.

These references provide the strongest evidence with which I am acquainted for the assertions that flogging was a usual punishment at Cambridge during the seventeenth century. There is a widely spread tradition that when at Christ’s College, Milton was flogged, but Peile has shown that there is no satisfactory evidence for it, and it is intrinsically improbable. In a disciplinary order of Corpus Christi College in 1684, the only punishments mentioned are discommonsings, admonitions, rustications, deprivation of seniority, and refusal of college testimonials, so, comparing this with the orders of 1622 and 1648 which I have quoted above, perhaps we may take it that the use of the rod there had become obsolete.

The above extracts are sufficient to show that corporal punishment was recognized under the Elizabethan codes, though it seems probable that public opinion was against its use, unless the students [214] were quite young; perhaps this was always the practice, and thus, as the age of entry rose, the use of the birch died out. Incepting bachelors and senior students were usually punished for serious offences by deferring their admission to degrees, loss of terms, or rustication: being adult, they were in effect regarded as not subject to corporal punishment.

One of these was confinement in Stocks. To this allusion has already been made in the orders of 1572 and 1607. Another instance is to be found in the records of Corpus Christi College, where about 1580, one of the students, Tobias Bland, who had libelled the master, was compelled to confess his fault publicly, next put in the stocks, and then expelled. In the old dining hall of Trinity College there were stocks in the minstrel’s gallery, but there is no evidence that they were re-erected when the hall was rebuilt in 1605; perhaps the punishment was then becoming unusual, though against this may be set the fact that there are references to the college stocks in 1610 at King’s, in 1625 at Christ’s, and in 1642 at Emmanuel. The stocks at King’s and Emmanuel, like those at Trinity, were in the hall. Allusions to their use are rare. The punishment [215] continued to be inflicted after the restoration, for on 10April 1680, Thomas Grigson, who had been rude to the junior proctor, Thomas Verdon of StJohn’s College, was ordered to be “sett fast in the stocks, by the heeles for one whole houre, which was presently effected by the Constable of Saint Bennett’s Parish in Cambridge.” He had partially atoned for his offence by begging pardon on his knees, and so escaped a worse punishment.

The Stang was a wooden pole on which the luckless culprit was tied, and carried ignominiously through the courts of his college. In John Ray’s Collection of English Words not Generally Used, London, 1674, it is said that the “word is still used in some colleges in the University of Cambridge; to stang scholars in Christmas, being to cause them to ride on a colt-staff or pole for missing of chappel.” References to the place where the pole was kept occur in the account-books of Trinity, StJohn’s, Queens’, and Christ’s. In Parne’s unpublished manuscript history of Trinity College, allusion is made to stanging as though at the beginning of the eighteenth century it had become recently obsolete. From his language it would seem also that undergraduates themselves inflicted the punishment on those of their members who declined to take part in the Christmas revelries.

Here is an example of an order of discommonsing at Trinity in the seventeenth century: “Agreed that Cassill should be punisht a monthes commons.... Agreed at the same time that Pepys besides a monthes commons, should have an admonition and pay the charges of the chirurgion for the healinge Cassil’s head w^h he broke with a key.” (Conclusion, 1August 1643.) Its preservation is due to the fact that Pepys’ punishment was combined with an admonition, and evidence that an admonition had been given might be required if subsequently a question of expulsion arose. The culprit in question was Thomas Pepys (B.A. 1645) and not the Samuel of immortal memory.

In 1815, Mansel, master of Trinity and bishop of Bristol, was accustomed to put men out of sizings and commons if they appeared in hall in trousers instead of knee breeches, and it would seem then that to be put out of sizings further deprived the student of obtaining private supplies from the college kitchens. Half a century ago the penalty was still in use at Trinity, being imposed on [218] scholars in waiting, who failed to appear after hall to say grace.

Here is an old-time example from the records of Trinity, 19July 1652, of the infliction of this and [219] other penalties interesting from the name of the scholar on whom it was inflicted:

Agreed that Dryden be put out of commons for a fortnight at least, and that he goe not out of the colledg during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons, without express leave of the master or vice-master; and that at the end of the fortnight he read a confession of his crime, in the hall, at the dinner time; at the three fellowes tables.

His offence was disobedience to the vice-master, and his contumacy in submitting himself to discipline.

The tasks set were very heavy. In the Gradus, 1803, the learning by heart of the first book of the Iliad is mentioned as a possible, though very severe imposition. Similarly, according to J.M.F.Wright, a thousand lines of Homer would have been regarded in 1815 as an unusually sharp punishment, but such as might have been given in lieu of rustication. Other impositions mentioned are the learning by [220] heart of a satire of Juvenal, and the production of an analysis of Butler’s Analogy.

At Trinity the deans were provided with long sheets of paper on which were printed in double columns forms such as the following:

... to transcribe ... lines of Virgil’s Aeneid, beginning at line ... book ..., and to deliver it to the Junior Dean after morning Chapel on Tuesday.

... to transcribe ... lines of Homer’s Iliad, beginning at line ... book ..., and to deliver it to the Senior Dean after Morning Chapel on Thursday.

... to repeat ... lines of ... by order of the Junior (or Senior) Dean.

These were filled up by the deans, cut off, and distributed by the chapel-clerk to the men concerned. Customarily in Trinity the senior dean gave impositions from the Iliad to be delivered on a Thursday, an the junior dean from the Aeneid to be delivered on a Tuesday. Forms for putting men out of commons, and admonishing them were printed in the same way on sheets, to be used as occasions arose.

Impositions were set at Trinity as late as 1830, but I believe the custom had died out before 1840, though I am told it was still used in certain Cambridge colleges as late as 1855. At Oxford the practice continued rather later and indeed at a few colleges seems to have been in force till near the close of the nineteenth century, for Rashdall, writing [221] in 1895, speaks of the practice as having been in force there until recently.

A century ago there seems to have been a sort of recognized scale of penalties for cutting lectures or chapel. First, a reprimand was given at an interview or sent in writing by a servant; second, an imposition was set; third the offender was deprived of commons and sizings. If these steps were ineffective, the matter might be regarded as a serious offence against college discipline, and lead to “hauling” by the tutor, a gating, an interview with the master, a formal admonition, and in extreme cases to rustication.

The theory of these petty punishments was set out by Whewell in his Principles of English University Education, 1837. A punishment, according to him, was to be regarded as the visible expression of college dissatisfaction with certain conduct: as an infliction it might be slight, but it emphasized the discontent expressed, and acted as a definite warning. He suggested a most severe scale; namely, for the first offence, forfeiture of one month’s commons; for the second, of three months’ commons; and for the third, expulsion; but there is no reason to think that this was ever the practice.

A formal admonition was intended to act as a serious warning, and it served as a statutory prelude to expulsion. For this reason it was usually recorded, and in former times an additional sting was added by compelling the culprit to make also a public or written confession of his fault. Admonitions are not very common in the records of Trinity: some thirty or forty occur in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, only a few in the eighteenth century, and they are rare in the nineteenth century save for a few relating to irregularity of attendances at chapel or lectures. The last admonition at Trinity was given in 1881, shortly before the new statutes of 1882 became operative. Here are typical instances of the record of admonitions.

Whereas heretofore I have received an admonition from the Master of the College for my lewd and outrageous behaviour within the same, and have since that time for like rioting and swaggering in the Town received another admonition from him before the Vice-Master of the College and my Tutor and also therewith all public correction, if these admonitions together with due punishment do not work reformation in me hereafter, I do likewise willingly [223] acknowledge that I am incorrigible and worthy for the next like offence to be expelled the College. Galen Browne. Circ. 1601. [Browne was elected to a scholarship in 1602, and graduated B.A. and M.A. in due course, so presumably he amended his ways.]

Whereas I have very unadvisedly and rashly stricken one Mr Halfhead, a College servant, to the shedding of blood, I do acknowledge myself to have received an admonition for that fault tending to expulsion. Thomas Shirley, 22February, 1621. [Halfhead was the manciple. Shirley was a fellow and master of arts, so the offence was the more serious, but perhaps the provocation was great. Shirley was subsequently junior bursar and tutor.]

I, Christopher Offley, do confess that often time and many ways I have offended against the Statute de Modestia Morum to the displeasure of God, hurt to myself, the evil example of others, and discredit of the College, and also have broken mine oath taken when I was preferred scholar in unreverent behaviour towards some of the fellows and specially in giving scandalous and contumelious speeches to Mr Hitch, being the Minister and Fellow of this College for which misdemeanors and undutiful carriage I am unfainedly sorry and heartily desire forgiveness both of God, and him, or any other whom I have offended, and confess I have received a just admonition of the Master and Seniors by setting my date to this writing. Circ. 1622. [Offley graduated B.A., 1624, and M.A., 1627, so presumably he amended his ways.]

Whereas we whose names are underwritten, on the fourth of April last, were guilty of grave irregularity and misbehaviour by insulting the Vice-Master, the Dean, and other officers of the College and thereby gave just offence to the Society, we do profess ourselves heartily sorry for the same and acknowledge the lenity of the Master and Dean in [224] suffering us to return so soon from rustication. And we do hereby engage to be strictly observant of our duty for the future and take this as our first admonition in order to expulsion. James Bensley, John Ambler. 29May, 1754. [Bensley graduated in due course and was elected to a fellowship: Ambler did not graduate.]

Ordered that ..., for irregular attendance at lectures and neglect of impositions, be admonished a second time previous to rustication or expulsion. 29May, 1844.

Temporary or permanent removal from the College were penalties reserved for the gravest offences. They are still recognized as possible punishments. The fact that there are but few records of the infliction of these extreme penalties indicates how easily discipline has always been maintained.

My readers may well think that the results of these notes are somewhat scanty, but if that nation is happy which has no history, surely universities and colleges are to be congratulated whose records of punishment are so few. To sum up the matter, the general effect left on my mind is that most of the common offences were due only to youthful exuberance of spirits and not to deliberate mischief making; and that the rules and sanctions, judged by the standard of their time, have been neither harsh nor unreasonable, and have usually been approved by public opinion in the University.