Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/128

 up into bloodthirsty riots. The grammar schools and licensed halls were a partial protection against the townspeople, but scarcely any against the faction-fights within the University itself.

In view of these and other dangers—amongst which the proselytism of the monks and friars must have seemed to many parents the most formidable of all—the colleges of Merton, Balliol, and University, followed in the fourteenth century by Queen's, Oriel, and Exeter, were founded not so much to bring education at Oxford within the reach of the poor as to make the conditions of university life more safe, more tolerable, and more refined. It is not without significance, if we bear in mind the constant rivalry of the Northern and Southern "nations" amongst the students, and the superior number and strength of the latter, that two out of the first three colleges, Balliol and University, were founded for students from the North of England. Merton had led the way by accepting none but Southerners; and these sharp distinctions would naturally have the effect of intensifying the rivalry of the two nations.

Now for such comforts and immunity as these endowed and comparatively well-disciplined colleges afforded, it 'would be necessary in one form or another to pay. To live at one of them would be more expensive than to put up with the rough lodging and fare of a "chamber dekyn," or to enter at the average hall; and it is reasonable to suppose that a student at Balliol or Merton, unless he came to Oxford at the charges of a wealthy patron, must have belonged to a fairly prosperous family.