Middle English Literature

New College, Oxford University
Oxford, New College MS C.288, fol. 3v
Language: Latin
Manuscript date: ca. 1465
Oxford and Cambridge were England’s only medieval universities, and they
began about 1170 and 1210 respectively. Numbers fluctuated around
1,500 at each university, where students generally studied theology but also
law, medicine, and other arts and sciences. The individual colleges, such as
New College which began in 1379, were initially founded to house and fund
scholars going on to these higher degrees. Agriculture and rents usually sup-
plied the revenue for the colleges, which paid for supporting the students,
several of whom came from poorer backgrounds. Students at New College
had already completed study in Latin grammar and rhetoric at Winchester
College before entering on the BA and then MA (see “Enarratio (Analysis
and Exposition of Texts),” p. 249). College members could be elected as
fellows of the college after two years.
Oxford, New College MS C.288 is a memorial to William of Wykham,
bishop of Winchester (1367–1404), who was responsible for the construc-
tion of Winchester College, the nave of Winchester Cathedral, and New
College, Oxford. Thomas Chaundler (ca. 1418–90), chancellor of Oxford
and warden of New College, donated the book to Thomas Bekyngton,
Bishop of Bath and Wells (1443–65) some 60 years after Wykham’s death.
The manuscript also contains three other prefatory images: of Winchester
College, of bishops and academics (including Wykham), and of Wells. The
high angle of folio 3v and the symmetrical layout of the picture display the
important aspects of the image clearly: the buildings and grounds in color
with figures in the background, and in the foreground the hundred mem-
bers of the New College – warden, fellows, and students – the number set
by Bishop Wykham.
Primary documents and further reading
Anstey, H. (ed.) (1868) Munimenta Academica, or Documents Illustrative of Aca-
demical Life and Studies at Oxford, 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, Reader,
and Dyer.
Bennett, J. A. W. (1974) Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Courtenay, W. (1987) Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-century England. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Images
Moran, J. A. H. (1985) The Growth of English Schooling, 1340–1548: Learning,
Literacy, and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Myers, A. R. (ed.) (1969) English Historical Documents, 1327–1485, vol. 4. London:
Eyre and Spottiswoode.
Rashdall, H. (1997) [1895] The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 3.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Storey, R. L. (1979) “The Foundation and the Medieval College, 1379–1530.” In
J. Buxton and P. Williams (eds.) New College, Oxford, 1379–1979. Oxford: Warden
and Fellows of New College, 3–43.
Weisheipl, J. A. (1964) “Curriculum of the Faculty of Arts at Oxford in the Early
Fourteenth Century.” Mediaeval Studies 26: 143–85.

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