PREFACE. Vll they wanted; By one statute, imposed on the University during Leicester's Chancellorship, the initiative in all aca- demical legislation was placed in the hands of the Heb- domadal Board : by another, the admission of students was confined to members of the Colleges, including the few surviving Halls. It was under these new conditions that the University assumed the peculiar character which has ever since attached to it. It now for the first time became a place of resort for the sons of the gentry, the finishing school for young men of the better classes before their entry into public life. The prescribed courses of study were mainly designed for the training of the clerical profession : but Oxford was much more than a clerical seminary. Not divines only, but leading statesmen, lawyers, wits, men of fashion, had kept terms at College. The phrase is significant. It was within the walls of his College that the young Oxonian's academical life was now passed. The tutor who directed his studies, the Dean who punished his offences against discipline, were the College officers. In that society he formed his friend- ships : to that he looked back in later years with the warmest regard. This change in the character of Oxford student life was the direct consequence of the policy enforced under Leicester's Chancellorship. But although the opportunity of entering on this new career was offered to all Colleges alike, it was not embraced by all with equal alacrity, or maintained with equal constancy. William of Wykeham's foundation, and those of Waynflete and Fox, established on his model, were already charged with the main- tenance of young scholars, and might consider that there was no room for outsiders, or that a few filii nobilium was as much as they need accommodate. All Souls for a time received a moderate number of poor batellers or servitors, but during the Civil War these disappeared, and the College has ever since occupied the unique position which it now holds. Merton showed great unwillingness to admit extranet within its walls. The experiment was more than once tried and deliberately abandoned. Till far into the nineteenth century