ABSTRACT
A contemporary observer of the medieval English universities would probably have remarked on the general youthfulness of the teaching staff both in arts and in the superior faculties of law, theology and medicine. A teaching position at a university was generally seen as an end in itself. Rather it was an avenue for social advancement, a preparation for a new career move. The salaried university lectureship was a much later phenomenon in the northern universities, and Oxford and Cambridge were among the last to institutionalize the system. Endowed lectureships first appeared in several of the English colleges in the fifteenth century, notably at the Cambridge colleges of Godshouse, later refounded as Christ's College, at Queens' and at the King's Hall. The significant exodus of teaching staff, especially of the abler members, made continuity of university instruction a near-impossible goal to achieve with any consistency.
