than double the proper price. On the whole, however, there a rude
abundance of meat and bread; indeed, Stoke may have fared better in
Catte's than the modern undergraduate does in the hall of the college
protected by St. Catherine. After dinner there would be lecture in
Lent, but we are not in Lent. A young man's fancy lightly turns to
the Beaumont, north of the modern Beaumont Street, where there are
wide playing-fields, and space for archery, foot-ball, stool-ball,
and other sports. Stoke rushes out of hall, and runs upstairs into
the camera of Roger de Freshfield, a reading man, but a good fellow.
He knocks and enters, and finds Freshfield over his favourite work,
the Posterior Analytics, and a pottle of strawberries. "Come down to
the Beaumont, old man," he says, "and play pyked staffe." Roger is
disinclined to move, he MUST finish the Posterior Analytics. Stoke
lounges about, in the eternal fashion of undergraduates after
luncheon, and picking up the Philobiblon of Richard de Bury (then
quite a new book), clinches his argument in favour of pyke and staffe
with a quotation: "You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth
lounging sluggishly in his study . . . He is not ashamed to eat fruit
and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his cup from side to
side upon it." Thus addressed, Roger lays aside his Analytics, and
the pair walk down by Balliol, to the Beaumont, where pyked staffe,
or sword and buckler, is played. At the Beaumont they find two men
who say that "sword and buckler can be played sofft and ffayre," that
is, without hard hitting, and with one of these Stoke begins to
fence. Alas! a dispute arose about a stroke, the by-standers
interfered, and Stoke's opponent drew his hanger (extraxit cultellum
vocatum hangere), and hit one John Felerd over the sconce. On this
the Proctors come up, and the assailant is put in Bocardo, while
Stoke goes off to a "pass-supper" given by an inceptor, who has just
taken his degree. These suppers were not voluntary entertainments,