Spenser's English Rivers. 83 



The material for this stanza is found in neither Camden or 

 Hohnshed. The prophecy that the Welland would drown that 

 part of Norfolk called Holland I have not found in any earlier 

 writer. Camden records the founding of a university at Stam- 

 ford in the reign of Edward III (1333). Thither the northern 

 students at Oxford migrated, but returned at the command of 

 a royal proclamation, and so ended the University of Stamford 

 (1590, Lincolnshire, pp. 423, 4; 1610, p. 533).^' Upton cites 

 Anthony a Wood's Historia et Antiquitates Oxoniae, p. 165 : ^* 

 'Merlini nempe vaticinium, qui sic ante ssecula complura prae- 

 dixerat : 



Doctrinse studium, quod nunc viget ad vada boum [i. e. Oxford], 

 Tempore venture celebrabitur ad vada Saxi [i. e. Stamford].' 



Though Upton calls the subject 'trite,' he mentions no possible 

 source of Spenser's information. It may have seemed trite 

 because it figured in the long controversy for seniority. 

 Spenser, who was not without interest in the dispute, may have 

 read in John Caius' De Antiquitate Cantabrigiensis Academiae, 

 London, 1568: 'Non excidit vestris animis (scio) diu fuisse in 

 discrimine vestram Academiam, & longa persuasione atque metu 

 partim vaticinii, quod fatidico quodam carmine Robertus Tal- 

 botus, antiquarius Oxoniensis, libro suo peramplo de versibus 

 antiquis, cui inscriptionem fecit satis familiarem, aiirum ex ster- 

 core, titulo de cenigmaticis & propheticis, sic expressit: 



Hoc magnum studium, quod nunc est ad vada boum. 

 Tempore venture celebrabitur ad vada Saxi: 



partim rei gestae quoque exemplo, quod quidam ex Oxoniensibus, 

 Oxonium deserentes, . . . multos secum Oxoniensis scholse Stam- 

 fordiam abduxere, quibus eo loci praelegerunt. Hinc expectatum 

 continuo est, ut, ex dissoluta vestra Academia, Stamfordiensis 

 resurgeret.'^^ 



" Cf. Stow, Annales, ed. 1615, p. 232; Drayton, Polyolbion 24. 1-9. 

 Hardyng (Chron., chap, xxv) and Grafton {Chron., pt. 5, yr. 863) tell 

 how King Bladud of Britain in his time founded a university at Stam- 

 ford. 



^ Spenser, ed. Todd, 5. 448. 



''^Quoted here from Hearne's edition in his Thonice Caii VindicicB, 2 

 vols., 1730, I. 254. Talbot's work is still in manuscript, according to 

 D. N. B. The prophecy seems to have been adapted from lines in 



