Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/152

 Spicilegium Liberianum. David was an Englishman who had studied at Clermont and at Paris, and had gone on to Bologna in the idea of qualifying himself for an archdeaconry, of which the bishop had perhaps given him a half promise. At Bologna he had got into debt, and set up as tutor to the young archdeacons; he then went on to Rome, where, by the use of the names of his great patrons, he nearly succeeded in getting a recommendation for the Deanery of S. Paul's. Very ungrateful conduct this was, for the deanery was one of the best things that could be got in London, and Master Ralph de Diceto, who was to be the next dean, was actually being made to allow Mr. David an exhibition of ten pounds a year from his own archdeaconry towards his expenses. It is satisfactory to know that David did not get the deanery, although we know no more about him. The two young archdeacons fulfilled their term of study and one of them became a bishop. All the three had, by the provisions of the cathedral statutes, dispensation from residence whilst they were away at the schools. The statute of S. Paul's, drawn by Ralph de Diceto himself, allowed not only non-residence but a pension of 40s. per annum from the communa or dividend of the canons; the student must go for not less than a year; he might go for two or three. This permission was freely used: the great churches, which had thirty or forty canons, at all stages of the ecclesiastical career, could well afford to dispense with the services of the younger ones, and they, notwithstanding the temptations of University life, could scarcely fail to bring back with them at the end of the time some experience, some culture and knowledge of the world, that fitted them for the occupations of their later life, whether their destiny was to serve the king in his court and embassies, or to make themselves useful in the educational work which was still carried on largely in all the cathedral establishments.

And so by a natural transition we pass to another point of interest, the attempts made by the bishops and clergy to furnish to Englishmen in their own land some of the appliances of learning which they found at the foreign Universities. And this had a particular importance at this