emphasis ill represented by italics, "Mr. Brown, the COLLEGE cannot
hear with pleasure of such behaviour on the part of a SCHOLAR. You
are GATED, Mr. Brown, for the first fortnight of next term." Now why
should this tribunal of the Master and the Dean, and this dread
examination, be called collections? Because (Munimenta Academica,
Oxon., i. 129) in 1331 a statute was passed to the effect that "every
scholar shall pay at least twelve pence a-year for lectures in logic,
and for physics eighteenpence a-year," and that "all Masters of Arts
except persons of royal or noble family, shall be obliged to COLLECT
their salary from the scholars." This collection would be made at
the end of term; and the name survives, attached to the solemn day of
doom we have described, though the college dues are now collected by
the bursar at the beginning of each term.

By this trivial example the perversions of old customs at Oxford are
illustrated. To appreciate the life of the place, then, we must
glance for a moment at the growth of the University. As to its
origin, we know absolutely nothing. That Master Puleyn began to
lecture there in 1133 we have seen, and it is not likely that he
would have chosen Oxford if Oxford had possessed no schools. About
these schools, however, we have no information. They may have grown
up out of the seminary which, perhaps, was connected with St.
Frideswyde's, just as Paris University may have had some connection
with "the School of the Palace." Certainly to Paris University the
academic corporation of Oxford, the Universitas, owed many of her
regulations; while, again, the founder of the college system, Walter
de Merton (who visited Paris in company with Henry III.), may have
compared ideas with Robert de Sorbonne, the founder of the college of
that name. In the early Oxford, however, of the twelfth and most of
the thirteenth centuries, colleges with their statutes were unknown.