ABSTRACT
The medieval English universities were privately financed corporations, deriving their resources in the main from teaching and degree fees, fines, rents from urban property and the generous donations of benefactors. Problems arose, however, with the external ecclesiastical powers that for a time seriously encroached upon the idea and reality of university autonomy. In common with many universities in northern Europe, Oxford and Cambridge, as institutions within the dioceses of Lincoln and Ely respectively, were, until the fifteenth century, subject to episcopal jurisdiction and to the metropolitan jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The English universities were well aware that they had to inspire confidence in their educational vocation and in the success with which it was carried out on behalf of the society that they served. If they failed to retain that confidence, their sources of private income and capital investment would be seriously diminished.
