but enforced by law. At supper the talk ranges over University
gossip, they tell of the scholar who lately tried to raise the devil
in Grope Lane, and was pleased by the gentlemanly manner of the foul
fiend. They speak of the Queen's man, who has just been plucked for
maintaining that Ego currit, or ego est currens, is as good Latin as
ego curro. Then the party breaks up, and Stoke goes towards Merton,
with some undergraduates of that college, Bridlington, Alderberk, and
Lymby. At the corner of Grope Lane, out come many men of the
Northern nations, armed with shields, and bows and arrows. Stoke and
his friends run into Merton for weapons, and "standing in a window of
that hall, shot divers arrows, and one that Bridlington shot hit
Henry de l'Isle, and David Kirkby unmercifully perished, for after
John de Benton had given him a dangerous wound in the head with his
faulchion, came Will de la Hyde and wounded him in the knee with his
sword."

These were rough times, and it is not improbable that Stoke had a
brush with the Town before he got safely back to Catte's Hall. The
old rudeness gave way gradually, as the colleges swallowed up the
irregular halls, and as the scholars unattached, infando nomine
Chamber-Dekyns, ceased to exist. Learning, however, dwindled, as
colleges increased, under the clerical and reactionary rule of the
House of Lancaster.



CHAPTER III--THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION