The schools and colleges founded during this century were the following:—Lincoln College, Oxford; founded in 1430, by Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, and completed by Thomas Scott, of Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1475. All Souls' College, Oxford; founded by Chicheley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1437. He expended upon its erection £4,545, and procured considerable revenues for it out of the lands of the alien priories, dissolved just before that time. Magdalene College, Oxford; founded by William Patten, Bishop of Winchester, in 1456, which soon became one of the richest colleges in Europe. King's College, Cambridge; founded by Henry VI., in 1443. Queen's College, Cambridge; founded by Margaret of Anjou, in 1448; and Catherine Hall, Cambridge, founded by Robert Woodlark, third provost of King's College, in 1475.
Copyist at work.
Besides these, Henry VI. founded Eton College, and Thomas Hokenorton, Abbot of Osney, founded in Oxford, in 1439, the public schools, called the New Schools. Before that time the professors of several sciences in both universities read their lectures in private houses, at very inconvenient distances from each other. To remedy this inconvenience, public schools were erected in both universities at this period. Hokenorton's schools comprehended the teaching of divinity, metaphysics, natural and moral philosophy, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, logic, rhetoric, and grammar. They required liberal aid from other benefactors, and they found these in the noble Humphrey of Gloucester, and the two brothers Kemp, the one Archbishop of York and the other Bishop of London. They were completed in 1480, including Duke Humphrey's noble library. The quadrangle, containing the public schools of Cambridge, was completed in 1475.
Up to this period Scotland had possessed no university whatever, and its youth had been obliged to travel to foreign universities for their education. But now the University of St. Andrews was founded in 1410, and obtained a charter in 1411 from Archbishop Wardlaw, which was confirmed by the Pope in 1412, and by James L in 1431. The great need of such an institution was soon evidenced by the university becoming famous. In 1444 Kennedy, the successor of Wardlaw, founded the College of St. Salvator in that city; and in 1451 James II., at the instance of William Turnbull, the Bishop of Glasgow, founded the university of that city; and in the same year was founded the college or faculty of arts in Glasgow, the king taking both college and university under his especial patronage and protection. This college received a handsome endowment from James, Lord Hamilton, and his lady, Euphemia, Countess of Douglas, in 1459. These were great measures in a very dark age, preparing light for those which came after.
Physician Bleeding a Patient. Harl. MS., 4,425.
Of the sciences taught in these institutions little can be said. There were few masters of such eminence in them as to give a high tone to them. Medicine, which was now taught in them all, had rather fallen off than advanced. Dr. Friend, in his History of Physic, could find not one physician of those times whose works deserve mention. Yet Dr. Gilbert Kymer, Duke Humphrey's physician, wrote a Dietary for the Preservation of Health—Dietarium de Sanitatis Custodia; and Dr. Fauceby, physician to Henry VI., was commissioned by Henry to discover the long sought-for Elixir of Life, and the Philosopher's Stone. But the sweating sickness, one of the most terrible distempers which ever visited this kingdom, and which raged from 1485 to 1551, completely set at defiance all the medical science of the times. It carried off its victims in seven or eight hours, and amongst them two lord mayors, five aldermen, and a prodigious number of people of all ranks. What is most extraordinary is that it is asserted to have attacked Englishmen residing in foreign countries at the same time, though foreigners living in England escaped.
