University. In this, the University of Oxford had a position of independence which Paris never achieved, for though the Parisian Rector's court dealt with cases of discipline and with internal disputes, criminal jurisdiction remained the prerogative of the Bishop. In the middle of the fourteenth century, royal grants of privileges to the University of Oxford culminated in the subjection of the city, and from the middle of the fifteenth "the burghers lived in their own town almost as the helots or subjects of a conquering people." (Cf. Rashdall, vol. ii. chap. 12, sec. 3). The constitution of Oxford was closely imitated at Cambridge, where the Head of the University was also the Chancellor, and the executive consisted of two rectors or proctors. In the fifteenth century the University freed itself from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely.

Germany possessed no universities before the fourteenth century. Prague was founded in 1347-8, and was followed before 1400 by Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg, and Cologne, and in the first quarter of the next century by Würzburg, Leipsic, Rostock, and in the Low Countries by Louvain. The first Scottish University dates from the early years of the fifteenth century. While the provincial universities of France tended to follow Bologna rather than Paris as their model, the German universities approximated to the Parisian type, and although the founders of the Scottish universities were impressed by some of the conditions of the student-universities, and provided for them a theoretical place in their constitutions, yet the three medieval Scottish universities of Scotland, in their actual working, more nearly resembled the master type.