The Oxford Scholars Were Prohibited From Wearing Boots and Spurs
UNDERGRADUATE, WHIPPING,
ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT
“Care was taken,” says Wood, “that formalities in public assemblies should be used, which, through negligence, were now, and sometime before, left off. That the wearing of boots and spurs also be prohibited, ‘a fashion’ (as our Chancellor saith in his letters) rather befitting the liberties of the Inns of Court than the strictness of an academical life, which fashion is not only usurped by the younger sort, but by the Masters of Arts, who preposterously assume that part of the Doctor’s formalities which adviseth them to ryde ad prædicandum Evangelium, but in these days implying nothing else but animum deserendi studium.” It was therefore ordered, “that no person that wears a gown wear boots; if a graduate, he was to forfeit 2s. 6d. for the first time of wearing them, after order was given to the contrary; for the second time 5s., and so toties quoties. And if an Or other punishment, according to the will of the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, for every time he wore them.” And in 1608, when Became Chancellor of Oxford, he decreed amongst other things, “that indecency of attire be left off, and academical habits be used in public assemblies, being now more remissly looked to than in former times. Also, that no occasion of offence be given, long hair was not to be worn; for whereas in the reign of Queen Elizabeth few or none wore their hair longer than their ears (for they that did so were accounted by the graver and elder sort swaggerers and ruffians,) now it was common even among scholars, who were to be examples of modesty, gravity, and decency.”