Learned body
Oxford schools
Also called Oxford · the schools · the foundations · the Oxford foundations · the reclaiming authority
Oxford's foundations and halls: four principal foundations (the old law foundation, a theological one, one for sons of valley gentry, and a newer trade-endowed one) plus poorer lesser halls, each a walled close run by an elected head, bursar and fellows, with copying rooms and almonry schools.
A university (with Cambridge, expensive and status-conscious), and also 'the schools', which demanded a written Obedience of every see and took the island-wide ordering of rite, burial and the examination of power from Canterbury in 3949. Oxford's foundations, halls and reading rooms, sharing a city, a quarrel and a set of privileges but no single charter. They taught law, theology and the arts of record, and their copying of muniments made the city.
Named with it
- Rector Cuthbert Redmayne
- a Rector of the schools
- Rector Cuthbert Redmayne of the Oxford schools
- Canon-Chancellor Peter Aveling
- Master Copyist Ismay Colt
- Canon-Chancellor Ralph Meakin
Ties
- governed through the chapter's chancellor, a standing quarrel
- schools interest is their faction in chapter
- retain retrieval companies quietly for their collections
- closely tied to the Oxford chapter
- took the ordering from the Canterbury chapter in the Obedience War
In the chronicle
At the table
Still cite the city's fifty-year refusal of the Chancery Standard (4271–4321) as proof Oxford yields only when it has finished being right. Oxford notoriously bets on school elections and examinations. Oxford treats its resistance as part of its institutional identity. They refused the Chancery's standard spelling from 4271 to 4321, which bred the lucrative archaic-document trade that two foundations dominate. Patronage and favour are their real economy, and they hire untraceable people for verifications, rival checks and guarding legacies, disowning the work fluently. They fear Cambridge certification eating into Oxford's competence.