PROMISE OF LONG AGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20264, 25 May 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

PROMISE OF LONG AGO.

HOW TIME RUNS AWAY*

SOME UNIVERSITY HISTORY. TWO UNDERGRADUATES HANGED. The common belief that the now British law with regard to property swept away all the picturesque old rentals, such as a rose a year, a snowball, a peppercorn, and so on, is certainly not shared by Oxford University. There a little quarrel, quite in the vein of centuries ago, is in progress between Magdalen and Mcrton Colleges. *

In 1517 Morton did Magdalen a favotftf in return for which Magdalen promised to pay for all time 16s 8d on tho election of a now President of Merton, Merton has now appointed a Merton professor as President, and for tho first time Magdalen refuses to pay, saying that the sum is one of a class of feudal dues which were abolished by the Act of 1660. Merton may, if she chooses, put the bailiffs in possession until tho money is paid, and it remains to be seen whether she will act upon her supposed right. The matter has no importance as an actual dispute, of course, says a London writer, but it is interesting as the survival of a right which has never been challenged

for over 409 years. The founders of the colleges built for eternity, they hoped, and it is the practice of those who have their management to take almost as long views in legislating for the future. Not many years ago a friend was telling the President of Magdalen of an old Scotsman who, wanting a freehold, refused a lease of 999 years, saying, " time soon runs awa'." Magdalen's head was able to reply that- time had truly run away for one of the Oxford colleges, seeing that a lease of 400 years granted to a shop in Oxford had just fallen in. The system by which practically all university offences are dealt with by Oxford University authorities, and not by the police, is the outcome of a regulation 700 years old. fn 1208 there were desperate doings in the town. A crime attribu ted to one of the scholars was avenged by the, townspeople in rough and ready fashion. They hanged two undergraduates. Thereupon the scholars all departed from the university, some to Paris, some to Reading, some to Cambridge, some to Maidstone; and Oxford was- as a city smitten with plague. The townspeople could not live without the scholars For five years the city lay under ban_ of excommunication, and n't last the chief men of the town were made to do penance by walking bare-footed, stripped to the waist, through the streets. They were ordered to provide a dinner yearly " for ever" to 200 poor scholars, and actually did so until long after tho Reformation.

Finally tho townspeople were made to swear that never again would they lav hands on offenders from the colleges, hut would leave them to tho university authorities % With certain amendments that agreement holds good still, and every member of the university enjoys an immunity won by his forerunners in the year i 213.