Catalogue description UNIVERSITIES.

Details of Subseries within E 101
Reference: Subseries within E 101
Title: UNIVERSITIES.
Description:

The greater number of the documents brought together under the heading of 'Universities' represent a genuine subdivision of the administrative accounts heard in the Exchequer. These are the accounts, particulars of account, and subsidiary documents concerning King's Hall, Cambridge, from 12 Edward III to 22 Henry VI. The section also includes documents concerning or mentioning Trinity College, King's College and Christ's College, Cambridge; the University itself; Merton College and Christ Church, Oxford; and the University of Oxford. Unlike the King's Hall documents, not all these other records can be regarded administratively as records of the colleges as accounting bodies, and most are strays from other files and series, not only of the King's Remembrancer but also of other departments of the Exchequer.
Arrangement:

The lists of documents concerning the universities are in a chronological sequence.
Custodial history: The majority of the documents brought together under the heading of 'Universities' are records originally filed in the office of the King's Remembrancer; there are also a few documents which are strays from the records of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, from the Court of Augmentations, and from the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer.
Unpublished finding aids:

The list of documents are included in Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, vol xxxv; in the printed supplement, Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, Supplementary Series, vol ix, and in the typescript addenda. Enrolled accounts for the King's Hall, Cambridge Edward III-Henry VI are listed in Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, vol xi.

Administrative / biographical background:

King's Hall, Cambridge

King's Hall, Cambridge had its origin as the society of the King's Scholars, founded by about 1317 by Edward II for the benefit of the chapel of the household. It was endowed as a college in 1337 and, for more than a century after that, was the largest and most important of the Cambridge colleges, with both undergraduate and graduate membership. Uniquely, every warden and scholar was appointed directly by the Crown. It was intended, at least in part, to serve the needs of the royal household, the court, and the various departments of government; and the connection with the chapel royal remained strong until the second quarter of the fifteenth century. The college was finally dissolved in 1546.

In addition to the income from its endowment, the college received direct funding from the Exchequer for the maintenance of the warden and fellows, and rendered annual account in the Exchequer. The accounts were presented by the warden of the Hall; and subsidiary documents include letters of privy seal for the appointment of scholars there, and expenses concerning the augmentation of the endowment. They detail the payments made to each named scholar, and the reason for the cessation of such payment, whether by death, promotion to a benefice, resignation, or other cause. Until the mid-fifteenth century both the warden and the fellows received robes out of the Wardrobe, or a commutation for the same; and, in the fourteenth century, each scholar on admission also received a bed by the king's gift. These gifts of stuff are included in the Wardrobe accounts in E 101.

In January 1446 Henry VI transferred by letters patent his right of nomination of scholars to the joint control of the provosts of his own new foundations of Eton and King's College, Cambridge; in 1447 they acquired the right of presentation of the warden, and the following year obtained effective governance of the college itself. Although the independent status of King's Hall was restored by Edward IV in 1462, Henry VI’s intervention marks the end of the series of Exchequer accounts, although records of the college itself indicate that the Crown resumed its practice of direct nomination to scholarships. The college was finally dissolved in 1546; its assets were incorporated in the foundation and endowment of Trinity College by Henry VIII in December of the same year.

The accounts for King's Hall from 14 Edward III to 22 Henry VI are enrolled on the Pipe or Foreign Account Rolls. Both the enrolments, and the documents in E 101, complement the major domestic and financial archive, which is that of the college itself.

Some use of the Exchequer documents was made by A B Cobban, The King's Hall within the University of Cambridge in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1969). An intended appendix to the work, drawing heavily on the material in E 101, concerning the admission of children and clerks of the chapel royal, was not published, but was deposited in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, for the use of scholars.

Other records: Oxford and Cambridge

Other documents within this section are less easily placed within their administrative context. They include writs of allocate, with subsidiary documents, relating to annuities payable by the University of Oxford; a petition for allowance by the warden of King's Hall, Cambridge; and papers relating to the foundation and endowment of Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge, and to disputes between the University of Oxford and the town of Oxford concerning the liberties of the University. The writ may be a stray from the files of Brevia baronibus (E 208) and both enrolment and context is likely to be found in the Memoranda rolls (E 159). The petition for allowance, whilst possibly directly subsidiary to a deposited account, may equally be a stray from the files of BiIIe (KR) or Bille et Petitiones (LTR) (E 207). The miscellaneous documents comprising E 101/348/25, and ranging in date from the reign of Richard II to that of Elizabeth I, include receipts for sums payable to the college of St Nicholas and St Mary, that is, King's College, Cambridge (founded by Henry VI); a series of receipts given by John Nottingham, clerk of the Receipt and subsequently chancellor of the Exchequer, for an annuity payable by the chancellor of the University of Cambridge out of the receipts of the assize of bread and ale; a petition, with schedule, for exemption from summons of the green wax, which is probably a stray from a file of Bille et petitiones (E 207); a warrant concerning the exemption of scholars from payment of the fifteenth and tenth, numerous others of which, with returns, are preserved in E 179 and E 115; an imperfect account for an un-named college; and receipts for payment out of the Court of Augmentations for the preachership founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, grandmother of Henry VIII, in Christ's College, Cambridge.

E 101/348/37, a warrant arising out of one of the many disputes between town and gown at Oxford, is a stray from the files of Brevia baronibus (E 208); whereas the submission of the university to the king's judgement, to which a substantial fragment of the university's seal is still appended, (E 101/348/36) may be either a stray from the archive of the king's council, or from that of Thomas Cromwell, forfeit after his attainder in 1540. As agent first for Thomas Wolsey, whose Cardinal's College was replaced by the king's foundation, and then as a councillor and agent for Henry VIII himself, and as chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1535, Cromwell was actively engaged in both universities, and other of his papers in SP 1 and E 36, among other classes, reflect that concern. Certainly it is stamped with a note of origin in the records of the Treasury of the receipt, an archival origin as a place of deposit effectively confirmed by an endorsement in the hand of Peter le Neve, who, as a deputy chamberlain of the Receipt, was formerly a custodian of records preserved there. Similarly, the petition of Thomas Pylson for restoration to a fellowship from which he had been expelled, is part of the same archive, or that of the council.

A single file, of 37 Henry VIII, documents the foundation and endowment of Christ Church, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge. These were, in a sense, twin foundations born out of the Chantries Act of 1545. The foundation of Christ Church was further enabled by the dissolution of King Henry VIII's college, the institution with which the king had replaced Wolsey's foundation of Cardinal's College, and the decision to move the diocesan cathedral of the newly founded Oxford diocese from Osney to St Frideswide's in the centre of the city. At Cambridge King's Hall, with Michael's House and Physick Hostel, surrendered to the Crown in October 1546 and formed the basis for the foundation of Trinity College in December of the same year. The last master of King's Hall, John Redman, became the master of Trinity. E 101/348/39 is an annotated valor, with attached warrant, specifying the period for which the revenues were to be taken to the king's use, and requiring their subsequent transfer to the colleges. The document itself properly belongs among the records of the Court of Augmentations.

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