4 INTRODUCTORY. 



coriator rusticorum, as were Robert de Belesme, and most of 

 the old Norman baronage. The English of Henry's reign, 

 who looked on Simon de Montfort as a champion in life, 

 treated him as a saint after death. But Simon's administra- 

 tion in Guienne was not that of a demagogue, nor was his 

 leadership of the feudal opposition, with its customary policy, 

 insurrection,- the act of a man who had made terms with his 

 inferiors, by abandoning and depressing his own order. We 

 should search in vain for a baron like Simon in any reiga 

 before that of Henry the Third. They are found in plenty 

 after his time, though none perhaps were so capable or so 

 disinterested as this Cromwell of the thirteenth century. 

 Matthew Paris is sufficiently querulous, but the reader will 

 search in vain for the ferocious and insolent chieftain of the 

 first fifty years of the house of Anjou, or for the cruelties which 

 disfigure earlier times, in the pages of his history. 



The two great English universities existed certainly before 

 the reign of Henry the Third, for we read of three thousand 

 students at Oxford in the reign of John a ; of the masters of 

 the schools in the days of Henry's grandfather*; of a concourse 

 of students thither in the reign of Stephen . But Oxford and 

 Cambridge appear to have been consolidated in the middle 

 of the thirteenth century. In 1252, Boniface, archbishop of 

 Canterbury, visited the university 4 , and laid his grievances 

 before the scholars. He was received respectfully, and enter- 



* Matt. Paris. 228. 21. 



b Cronica Jocelini de Brakelond, p. 69. 



c As far as I have been able to find, the only author who states that Vacarius 

 lectured at Oxford in the year 1148 is Gervase of Dover (Twysden, 1665). Robert 

 de Monti (Hist. Normann. p. 983) says that he lectured in England, but does not 

 specify the locality. Mr. Hallam quotes, John of Salisbury, as cited by Selden in his 

 Dissertation on Fleta, to the effect that the lectures took place at Oxford. But 

 Salisbury (who had been present at Becket's murder, and was wounded on that occa- 

 sion) merely states that Vacarius was invited to England by Archbishop Theobald, and 

 that, after lecturing, he was silenced at Stephen's instance. But, says Selden (p. 511, 

 edit. 1647), we do not know whether he lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, London, 

 or in the archbishop's palace. 



d Matt. Paris. 859 I. 



