’In the sad and sodden street To and fro Flit the feverstricken feet Of the Freshers, as they meet, Come and go.’ _Q_
Whatever the theory of their founders, it is at no late period in the history of colleges that we begin to trace the development of the modern undergraduate. It was only natural that the ’gentle natures and studious habits’ of a select band of learners should undergo some modification as college after college was founded, and comparative frivolity would from time to time obtain admission to the sacred precincts. The University became the resort of wealth and rank, as well as of mere intellect, and the gradual influx of commoners--still more, of ’gentlemen commoners’--once for all determined the character of colleges as places of serious and uninterrupted study. Probably the Civil War, bringing the Court to Oxford, was a potent factor in relaxation of the older academic discipline; deans or sub-wardens of the period doubtless finding some difficulty in adapting their rules to the requirements of undergraduates who might from time to time absent themselves from chapel or lecture in order to raid a Parliamentary outpost.
But perhaps the most instructive picture of the seventeenth-century undergraduate is to be found in the account-book of one Wilding, of Wadham (published by the Oxford Historical Society), apparently a reading man and a scholar of his college, destined for Holy Orders. The number of his books (he gives a list of them) shows him to have been something of a student, while repeated entries of large sums paid for ’Wiggs’ (on one occasion as much as 14*s*--more than his ’Battles’ for the quarter!) would seem to suggest something of the habits of the ’gay young sparks’ alluded to by Hearne in the next century. On the whole, Master Wilding appears to have been a virtuous and studious young gentleman. Now and then the natural man asserts himself, and he treats his friends to wine or ’coffea,’ or even makes an excursion to ’Abbington’ (4*s.*!). Towards the end of his career a ’gaudy’ costs 2*s.* 6*d.*, after which comes the too-suggestive entry, ’For a purge, 1*s.*’ Then comes the close: outstanding bills are paid to the alarming extent of 7*s.* 8*d.*; a ’wigg,’ which originally cost 14*s.*, is disposed of at a ruinous reduction for 6*s.*--the prudent man does not give it away to his scout--and J. Wilding, B.A., e. Coll., Wadh., retires to his country parsonage--having first invested sixpence in a sermon. Evidently a person of methodical habits and punctual payments; that had two wigs, and everything handsome about him; and that probably grumbled quite as much at the 10*s.* fee for his tutor as his modern successor does at his 8*l.* 6*s.* 8*d.* But, on the whole, collegiate and university fees seem to have been small.