Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/26

24 view, Peter House was shortly afterwards founded at Cambridge. But certainly at that time, neither did Merton College in Oxford, nor Peter House in Cambridge, constitute the respective universities; but they were small and private bodies, existing in connexion with them.

But, it seems, that between the latter part of the thirteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the colleges so increased in number and size, as gradually to absorb within their walls the whole floating body of students. The advantages which they offered of cheaper education, and more strict discipline, together with the prospect of admission to the benefits of their respective foundations, would naturally make the students resort to them in preference to the unendowed halls. And these in consequence rapidly sunk as the number of the colleges increased and their capacity was extended: so that when, subsequently to the reformation, the influx of students to the university was greatly diminished, the halls so nearly perished altogether, that instead of three hundred, which existed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, at the beginning of the seventeenth there was only the same number as at present.

But although the halls thus disappeared in open competition with the colleges between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the argument of the reviewer is, that in more modern times they would inevitably have revived, were there the same