Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/334

314 of Polite Latin, Professorships of Philosophy, Divinity, Canon Law, Natural Sciences—above all of the dreaded Greek; confiscating funds to support them. For the old threadbare text-books, some real teaching was swiftly substituted. The idle residents were noted down, soon to be sent home by Parliament to their benefices, under pain of being compelled, like all other students, to attend lectures, and, in their proper persons 'keep sophisms, problems, disputations, and all other exercises of learning.'

The discipline was not neglected: 'We have enjoined the religious students,' Leyton wrote to Cromwell, 'that none of them, for no manner of cause, shall come within any tavern, inn, or alehouse, or any other house, whatsoever it be, within the town and suburbs; [each offender] once so taken, to be sent home to his cloyster. Without doubt, this act is greatly lamented of all honest women of the town; and especially of their laundresses, that may not now once enter within the gates, much less within the chambers, whereunto they were right well accustomed. I doubt not, but for this thing, only the honest matrons will sue to you for redress.' These were sharp measures; we lose our breath at their rapidity and violence. The saddest vicissitude was that which befell the famous Duns—Duns Scotus, the greatest of the Schoolmen, the constructor of the memoria