Volume 1

Register of the University of Oxford.

Date:
1885-1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Register of the University of Oxford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. The printed Catalogue of Oxford Graduates only begins with the year 1659, but the materials exist from which a continuous list of degrees since 1505 may be made out. These materials are to be found in the Registers of Congregation; and there is a mutilated Register of even earlier date, containing the years from 1449 to 1463. Unfortunately we cannot go back as far as the time of Pope Alexander V, who was B.D. of Oxford and D.D. of Paris more than half a century previously1. In some foreign universities still earlier registers are preserved. Heidelberg2 has just published a roll of members, which begins in 1386. We couTd do something more by consulting the documents preserved in the Col- leges ; thus the list of fellows at Exeter College begins in 1318, at New College in 1386. The present volume gives all the names contained in the four earliest Registers, and a part of the fifth so far as the year 1570—71. Here we stop for the present, as the Lists of Matriculations begin about this date for some Colleges a little earlier and for some a little later3. The next volume will combine the matriculations and degrees together, and be especially valuable for the literary history of the Elizabethan and early Stuart age. These five Registers are preserved in the Archives of the University, and may be described as follows (1-5): (1) A a. 5 contains entries from 4 Dec. 1448 to 19 Nov. 1463. Folio 24 is a leaf of the year 1440 which has strayed into this volume from the Acta Curie Cancellarn Oxon, where it, with five others, is wanting It is printed m the Appendix. The volume should contain 128 leaves, but eaves n, 16-20, 30, 74 are wanting. There are, however, double leaves, 24 a and b, and triple leaves 98 a and b and c (98 a and b are a copy of mutilated leaves in a late hand), so that the real number is 124. e volume is imperfect at both beginning and end, the earlier leaves are Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Veritatum, ed. Rogers, p 161 ssLtsr zr sat* sir asa e ore 24 March, 1393. A William Wells was Abbot of S Mnrv’c v^ri 1 1 of Rochester 1437 to 1444. y S’ York> and BlshoP “** “ 0rderu was taken in ^64 for a matriculation book, and the list for
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