Death of a Scholar: The Twentieth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew)

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Death of a Scholar: The Twentieth Chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew (Chronicles of Matthew Bartholomew) Page 44

by Susanna Gregory


  Beneath him, Bon’s bones gradually turned to dust, and although Michael continued to hunt, no trace of the blind lawyer was ever found. It was generally believed that he had fled to the Fens and had drowned in one of its treacherous marshes. Only Clippesby knew different, but he saw no reason to disturb the dead.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The position of anatomy in university curricula was a delicate one. The great medical schools at Salerno, Bologna, Montpellier and Padua had long since recognised it as a good way for surgeons to learn about the human body; dissections were also conducted for legal reasons, to assess whether someone had been the victim of foul play – the first autopsies. The Church did not ban the practice, but it was frowned upon in England, and there is no evidence that it formed part of a medical education. Physicians, considered at this time to be superior to barber-surgeons, would certainly not have sullied their hands with anything so base.

  One reason for the lack of enthusiasm was that contemporary books and authorities thought they had a pretty good idea of the way things worked, so inclined to the opinion that not much could be learned from dissection anyway. The intricacies of comparative anatomy were a long way in the future, and the feeling was that once you had seen one liver, heart or stomach, you had seen them all.

  Another hot topic in medieval universities was apostolic poverty. The debate had continued for centuries, but had another airing in the 1300s, when Pope John XXII went head to head with the Franciscans about it. His bull Ad conditorem was vigorously contested by the Grey Friars, including William of Ockham, who wrote Opus nonaginta dierum (the Work of Ninety Days). The debate grew so heated in Oxford, that the King was obliged to issue an edict in 1358, forbidding its scholars from discussing the matter, and several bishops banned men from their dioceses from enrolling there, lest they picked up nasty heretical ideas. No doubt Cambridge made the most of the situation by opening its doors a little wider.

  Most of the people in Death of a Scholar were real. Michaelhouse, founded in 1324 by Hervey de Stanton, had a Master in 1358 named Ralph de Langelee, and his Fellows included Michael (de Causton), William (de Gotham), John Clippesby, Thomas Suttone, William Thelnetham and Simon Hemmysby. John Aungel and John Goodwyn were later members.

  William Rougham was an influential member of Gonville Hall and became its Master in 1360. William Heyford was vicar of St Clement’s in the 1350s; John Felbrigge was a University proctor, although not until the 1370s; John Weasenham was the University Stationer; and there were a number of scholars named Ratclyf. Geoffrey de Elvesmere, a University clerk, was stabbed in the back in 1371. Albizzo di Nerli hailed from the Carmelite convent in Florence, and came to study in Cambridge in the 1370s. He had a reputation for great sanctity, and died in 1428.

  Outside the University, Nicholas Fulbut was a burglar, Roger Verius was convicted of robbery and John Jekelyn was a thief, all active in Cambridge in the 1330s. Nicholas de Stannell was Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1358, and the Tulyets were a powerful local family throughout the fourteenth century. In the early 1300s, John Bon murdered John le Knyt, aided and abetted by Hugo, son of John Potmoor. William Illesy was also involved. None were ever convicted of the crime, with Hugo and Bon dying in prison before the case could be heard. There is no record of what happened to Illesy.

  John Meryfeld was a famous physician at about this time, while William Holm held a royal appointment as surgeon. So did Master Lawrence, one of the medics who tended Queen Isabella on her deathbed in August 1358. She died shortly after swallowing a purge made up by Thomas Eyer the apothecary, although there is nothing to suggest that this was anything more than coincidence.

  Colleges were different from hostels, because they were endowed – they had a pot of money at their fingertips that made them more stable than those that relied solely on fluctuating student fees. As such they tended to have a greater say in University affairs, although some hostels were exceptions to the rule. There was a little flurry of new Colleges in Cambridge in the mid-fourteenth century, with Pembroke (Valence Marie), Gonville Hall, Trinity Hall and Corpus Christi (Bene’t) founded between 1347 and 1352. Then there was a significant hiatus, and no more appeared until Magdalene in 1428.

  There was never a Winwick Hall in Cambridge, although there was an influential clerk named John Winwick who founded a College, named after himself, in Oxford. It was one of two pre-1400 Colleges in that University which failed to survive, although it might have done had John Winwick not died before matters were fully settled.

  John Winwick was an extremely able public servant and a noted pluralist, both of which served to make him very rich. He began as a lowly clerk from Huyten (Uyten), now in Merseyside, but quickly climbed the slippery pole until he became one of Edward III’s most trusted administrators. He was appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1355, a post he held until his death in 1360. He was a canon in nine different cathedrals, not to mention accruing lucrative posts in York, Clitheroe, Shrewsbury and Ripon.

  Winwick College was for lawyers, and the founder’s will stipulated that the funding was to come from the church at Ratcliffe on Soar, the title of which the College was to hold. The Pope failed to ratify the arrangement, and Winwick’s executors did not press the matter, perhaps because they wanted the tithes for themselves. Had it survived, Winwick College might have been as much a household name as any of the medieval foundations in Oxford and Cambridge, but it faded into oblivion from lack of funds, and is now no more than a footnote in the history books.

 

 

 


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