We find it
hard to realize the fact that for centuries a Fellow of a college was
expected to have two or three _chamber fellows_ who shared his
bedroom with him; and that his _study_ was no bigger than a
study at the schoolhouse at Rugby, and very much smaller than a
fourth-form boy enjoys at many a more modern public school. At the
hostels, which were of course much more crowded than the colleges
were, a separate bed was the privilege of the few. What must have
been the condition of those semi-licensed receptacles for the poorer
students in the early times, when we find as late as 1598 that in St.
John's College there were no less than seventy members of the college
"accommodated" (!) in twenty-eight chambers. This was before the
second court at St. John's was even begun, and yet these seventy
Johnians were living in luxury when compared with their predecessors
of two hundred years before.
"In the early colleges the windows of the chambers were unglazed and
closed with wooden shutters; their floors were either of clay or
tiled; and their halls and ceilings were unplastered." We have
express testimony that at Corpus Christi College not even the
master's lodge had been glazed and panelled before the beginning of
the sixteenth century. By an inventory which Mr. Clark has printed,
dated July 3, 1451, it appears that in the master's lodge at King's
College, "the wealthiest lodge of the university, there was then only
one chair; that the tables were supported on trestles; and that those
who used them sat on forms or stools.
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