Sometimes the college added
on an aisle for the accommodation of its members; sometimes it
obtained a _licence_ to use a room in which Divine Service might
be conducted for a time; once the founder of a college erected a
collegiate quire in the middle of the parish church, a kind of
gigantic _pew,_ for the accommodation of his scholars. Downing
College has never had a chapel to the present hour.
Of all the developments, however, in the college idea, none has been
more remarkable than that of the master's lodge. In the fourteenth
century the master of a college was but _primits inter pares,_
and the distance between him and his _fellows_ or _scholars_
was less than that which exists now between the Commanding officer
of a regiment in barracks and his brother officers. The master had no
sinecure; the discipline of the place depended upon him almost entirely,
for in those days the monarchial idea was in the ascendant; the king
was a real king, the bishop a real bishop, the master a real master.
Everything was referred to him, everything originated with him,
everything was controlled by him. But as for the accommodation
assigned to him in the early colleges, it was very inferior indeed to
that which every graduate at Trinity or St. John's expects to find in
our time. The Provost of Oriel in 1329 was permitted by the statutes
to dine apart if he pleased, and to reside outside the precincts of the
college if he chose to provide for himself another residence; but this
was clearly an exceptional case, for the master was at this time the
actual founder of the college, and Adam de Brune might be presumed
to know what was good for his successors in the office for which he
himself had made provision.
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