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5H MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
did great damage to the cause of education throughout the
country: but in the universities, the ill consequences ofthe long>
protracted war with France were more lasting. It interrupted
the free interchange ofideas between English and French unix
versities that had hitherto proved one of the most fruitful and
salutary features of academical studies. The decline in papal
prestige added a further disturbing factor. John Wyclif
(d. 1384), the reforming theologian, embodied the confident
individualism, the nationalist bias, and the high/minded
scepticism that flowed from these events. The firm measures
taken by Archbishops Courtenay and Arundel to eradicate
his teaching from Oxford were calculated to discourage
further challenge to traditional theology. The Wyclifite crisis
was productive ofsome apologetic by mendicant theologians,
notably the Doctrinale of the Carmelite, Thomas Netter of
Walden; but by the time the superb Divinity School was
completed about 1470 (PI. 109 ), Oxford theology had never
been at so low an ebb.
Unlike Paris, Oxford and Cambridge developed flourish'
ing faculties of law in which both canon and civil law were
read. At Oxford, as is evidenced by the visit of Vacarius,
legal studies have their origin in the middle years ofthe twelfth
century. By the thirteenth century a legal degree, whether in
canon or civil law, or both, had become a muclvdesired quali'
fication for all clerks who wanted to be ecclesiastical lawyers
rising to become important diocesan officials or clerks in the
royal service carrying out diplomatic missions and other respon^
sible duties. It is likely that Henry Bracton (d. 1268) acquired
his knowledge of civil law as a student at Oxford. From the
middle ofthe fourteenth century the majority of bishops were
graduates, and many ofthese graduates in law. The training in
civil law given at Oxford and Cambridge met the professional
needs of English clerks, but never compared with that to be
obtained in the law schools of Italy. William of Drogheda
(d. c. 1245) was the only civilian in either university to be
quoted by the doctors of Bologna. In canon law, on the other
hand, both universities developed schools of importance, and