But in these our colleges we live in
such exact order, and under so precise rules of government, as that
the famous learned man Erasmus of Rotterdam, being here among us fifty
years passed, did not let to compare the trades in living of students
in these two places, even with the very rules and orders of the
ancient monks, affirming moreover, in flat words, our orders to be
such as not only came near unto, but rather far exceeded, all the
monastical institutions that ever were devised.
In most of our colleges there are also great numbers of students, of
which many are found by the revenues of the houses and other by the
purveyances and help of their rich friends, whereby in some one
college you shall have two hundred scholars, in others an hundred and
fifty, in divers a hundred and forty, and in the rest less numbers, as
the capacity of the said houses is able to receive: so that at this
present, of one sort and other, there are about three thousand
students nourished in them both (as by a late survey it manifestly
appeared). They were erected by their founders at the first only for
poor men's sons, whose parents were not able to bring them up unto
learning; but now they have the least benefit of them, by reason the
rich do so encroach upon them.
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