Who established Oxford University?

read all about it here...

Oxford, like all such institutions both religious and secular at that time, was funded by the private donations of those who thought to burnish their public reputations, or earn brownie points in the after life.

It is unclear who actually founded it, however Oxford University students were involved in anti government protests during the wars of the roses: (14thC and 15thC)
It is a spectacular centre of learning with poor security, just dress down and pretend to be a student: you won't be challenged.
I believe that Henry I funded part of it, so it was partly a state function even then. As well as religious salvation, national prestige was also involved: having a top university gave a country kudos, and attracted trade. Weapons research is something that was always funded by states too.
I believe the university can trace its roots as far back as the 13thC.

If Henry I had "founded" Oxford, that would make it's foundation a project of the Plantagenet family. But given that Henry died in 1135, and Oxford is thought to have been founded in the late 12th century, that claim is highly suspicious.

From "A brief history of the university, at the web site of the University of Oxford.



If one considers that the date of 1096 represents some sort of founding, because "teaching existed" then, Henry I does not qualify because in 1096, William Rufus was the King of England--Henry did not become King until 1100, after William Rufus was murdered. As for whether or not Henry "funded" it, that would not make it a "state function," because in those early feudal days, Kings did not run a government as we recognize them. They live off the revenues of their estates, and what was owed them in feudal dues by their feudatory nobility.

However, looking to the 1167 date given for Henry Plantagenet's ban on English students attending the University of Paris, that would make the date of the foundation of the university late 12th century. In 1167, Henry I had been dead for more than 30 years.

I need to correct an error in my next to last post. Henry I was not a Plantagenet.

He could plant his genetic stuff though.

so all told he had 72.8 children

my friend mentioned the Plantagenet family.

I think a lot of the debate here has been churlish: I suggested Henry I because "public" schools were started in his reign. He is the sort of king who would have founded an educational establishment. William Rufus (II) was a warrior redneck who took very little interest in anything other than hunting and warfare. I proposed this date as a starting point for debate: I maintain that it is quite likely that local centres of learning were amalgamated and augmented by Herny I.
The Geography was very different at the time: Scotland was still Independent: parts of France belonged to England; a national government was being established, certainly for raising taxes.

King's College was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI in Cambridge. And the Plantagenets certainly will have founded something in Oxford as well.

(But University College [Oxford] was founded by William of Durham in 1249, not King Alfred as some say).

I think England had a stronger government than most because the largely Saxon population was being occupied by a much smaller Norman force. hundreds of local castles were built: the system was still feudal, but England was developing a merchant class (wool traders etc) .
Feudal states can still fund universities.

I believe the Plantagenet family were the most likely. Henry II Plantagenet was a forceful personality, who wished to, as much as possible, take all the reigns of power into his own hands. Richard and John, who succeeded him, would have been less likely to have taken any decisive steps, but probably could have been relied upon to endow a school here, a college there. Henry III, after he attained his majority, would have been a likely candidate, as he was very devout and likely to see that as a religious good work. His son, Edward, would only have been likely to have done that sort of thing to the extent that it had a pragmatic benefit for the power of the throne--which means it would be likely that he'd have done so to strengthen his position with the burgesses.

To speak of "funding" universities or schools is, however, to display a good deal of ignorance of how the feudal system worked. That is why i mentioned earlier where revenues derived. Monarchs in those days dealt very rarely in cash--many of the feudal dues they were paid were received in kind. Large numbers of documents establishing manorial dues actually specify the number of eggs, of fowl, of pigs, sheep, goats, bullocks, measures of grain, etc., which must be paid to the lord of the manor. The payments were made that way all along the chain upward. Land held directly of the King, however, was likely to be held only on terms of providing men at arms (and the number of men, and the quality of their equipment was often specified) as the payment of feudal dues.

It is actually foolish in the 12th and 13th centuries to speak of funding any type of foundation. What little cash Kings could scrape together, they guarded jealously, the biggest advantage to cash being the ability to hire mercenaries, or to pay some other magnate for troops he were known to command. Direct levies of taxes for cash were fairly rare, and the feudal levy (the term feudal levy refers to the provision of troops at the King's command) was only notionally reliable at best, and then only within a short range of the estates of the "overmighty lords" upon whom the King would rely. The feudal levy was completely unreliable for overseas military ventures, which is what the Plantagenets wasted almost all their money on. Richard was killed fighting in France, and John ruined his domestic economy and alienated the baronage with futile, expensive and unsuccessful campaigns in France.

Therefore, monarchs and magnates did not fund institutions, they endowed them. The proceeds from a certain manor or group of manors would be settled upon the institution in question, and it was usually the responsibility of the reeve acting for the endowed institution to see to it that the agreed upon set of goods were handed over. It was not at all unusual to see contracts in which the very payments were specified, as noted above: so many fowl, so many four-legged livestock, so many measures of grain, etc. This enabled monarchs and magnates to at least appear to be generous, and once endowed, the matter of the actual payment were out of their hands, and out of their hair. Neither monarchs nor magnates were ever likely to be so foolish as to hand over cash, nor more particularly, to promise to pay cash over time. Ready money was in short supply even as late as the 17th century, and Charles I ended up fighting (and losing) a civil war in the 17th century because he tried to fiddle the tax revenues to buy an army to attack Scotland. Edward I established a regularly sitting Parliament for the express purpose of getting cash out of the Commons, the one part of that society which could be relied upon to actually, routinely have any cash to hand over.

It is very likely that no monarch of the period actually founded the University of Oxford, and it is equally likely that any "funding" which a monarch or magnate gave the university would be an endowment which paid in kind. If the university wanted cash, they'd have to look to their own agents to convert the endowed income into ready money.

FoW displays a charmingly naïve, and thoroughly confused notion of the realities of political life and domestic economy in England in particular and Europe in general in the 12th and 13th centuries. There was very little cash, very little specie (gold and silver coins) in circulation, and almost all commerce was conducted with the barter of goods, letters of credits and other forms of promises to pay. Kings had no authority upon which to levy taxes, and only very slowly built up the rights to certain revenues based on the quid pro quo of granting certain liberties to boroughs or corporations. Most of Magna Carta is concerned with rights in property, or the indemnification of boroughs or corporations for their actions.

Furthermore, it is equally naïve to speak of England controlling parts of France. Apart from the fact that France, per se (as we know it), did not exist, what the English could claim to control ended at the points of their swords or the ends of their lances. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the heiress to a great estate which embraced nearly half of what is today France. The French, however, did not recognize rights in property for women, and upon the death of her father, the King of France immediately declared her to be his ward, and very quickly married her off to his son, who was to become King Louis VII. They required a papal dispensation to marry, because of consanguinity (close blood relationship). Later, when that marriage went sour, they had it annulled . . . on grounds of consanguinity. Shortly thereafter, she married Henry Plantagenet (more than a decade younger than her), and once again, needed a papal dispensation because of consanguinity--Henry was even more closely related to her than Louis had been.

The French weren't about to just blithely give up the western half of that territory, and the English were obliged to fight to hold on to it. The Normans could claim Normandy, but they had to fight to hold onto that. They could claim Poitu and Anjou by direct right of the male line, but that did not make those territories immune to attack. The idea that the French would agree to half of the territories in their sphere of influence suddenly being wrenched away from them to the benefit of the Norman rulers of England is merely silly.

Henry II, Richard, John, Henry III and Edward I all spent huge amounts of what cash they could get their hands on in the attempt to hang on to Eleanor's patrimony. About the only reason that Edward II didn't do the same thing is that he was such a wimp, and was rather quickly imprisoned by his wife and her lover, and soon thereafter murdered (the English seem to have had a habit of murdering kings for a few centuries). The son of Edward II and his French wife, Edward III, started the Hundred Years War in the 14th century on the basis of his claim that he was the rightful heir to the French throne. The direct male line of the Capetians failed in 1328, after being passed through the sons of King Philippe IV. The French claimed the existence of a Salic Law which prohibited women from inheriting, and the crown passed to the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetians. Isabella of France, mother of Edward III was one of the claimants done out of the inheritance by the invocation of the Salic Law, so Edward III, in 1336, declared that he would go to war to take the throne which he claimed was rightfully his. It's not like it was ever a very busy war--it languished for long years, and actually lasted almost 120 years.

But the point is, that both in the 12th century, and in the 14th century, English claims to parts of or all of France were based on descent from women, which the French did not recognize as valid. From the very beginning of the Norman monarchy, the Kings of England either had to fight for the claims they made in France, or watch it slip away. Not all English kings were willing to fight, or could afford to fight, which just meant more futile and costly campaigning when they were succeeded by kings who were willing to fight. Those who were willing to fight, usually were not financially able, and the attempts to levy special taxes to support their wars, when the incomes of their private estates were insufficient, were usually not successful and lead to embarrassments like Magna Carta.

It was Edward I who attempted to remedy the situation. When Henry III died in 1272, Edward returned to England (from the "Holy Land"), arriving in 1274. He undertook a close review of government (which largely meant the administration of his private owned estates) and found a huge mess. Many royal properties had been alienated, which meant that when their income had been used to endow this or that institution, or to reward this or that individual, and the instituion failed, the individual died or the term of the endowment expired, the royal estates continued to be mulcted to the benefit of those who could get away with it. Edward took a great deal of trouble to remedy those alienations and to put his personal finances back on a sound basis.

His father had fought an unsuccessful war against the Welsh, in the failed attempt to make Edward the first Norman Prince of Wales. Llewellyn the Great had different ideas, and Henry's attempts to conquer Wales failed miserably. More than that, the Welsh came to the aid of Simon de Montfort, the King's brother-in-law, and an "overmighty lord," who called for the reform of Henry's lax administration. In those days, magnates and monarchs "attached" people to their personal cause by giving away land or income, and Henry had abused this terribly. Monfort's rebellion, and the convening of the first Parliament in the 1260s was a powerful influence on the young Edward, who, along with his father, was made a prisoner of Montfort when Montfort first defeated the King. Edward eventually escaped, raised an army among the Welsh borderers (the nobility whose estates bordered Wales) and defeated and killed Monfort.

The the causes of Henry's failures in Wales and with his rebellious subjects was not lost on Edward. Reliance on the feudal levy effectively meant that the King in fact had no reliable army. The only way to get a reliable army was to hire and pay one. Edward's putting of his personal estates in good order went a long way to allowing this, and he soon conquered Wales. But it was not enough, and he was ambitious to conquer Scotland, as well, and may have intended to reconquer land claimed in France, although he never got that far. His most brilliant move was to regularly convene Parliaments, such as Simon de Monfort had done more than a decade earlier. Montfort's Parliament had convened only the nobility and certain knights of the shires. Edward's Parliament was regularly organized into a House of Commons, and a House of Lords. The Commons, flattered at being included in royal government, were willing to vote "supplies" for the King (i.e., indirect taxation), and the Lords were more than happy to consent to such measures when it cost them nothing personally, little realizing how effectively Edward had made them politically irrelevant. Over time, of course, an effect arose which Edward had not foreseen. As Kings needed money or levies of troops from boroughs or the shires, the Commons increasingly demanded a quid pro quo of liberties for the boroughs or powers for the Parliament. Edward's canny innovation to generate revenue and sideline the baronage was eventually to create a monster--Parliament--which would make both monarchs and magnates politically irrelevant.

And nearly all of these measure, all of these causes and effects, proceeded from the lust by Norman Kings for land and power, land and power they could not afford.

I think Henry II is (at last) a reasonable suggestion: one of the things you may not have taken into account tho is that feudal systems supply free labour. Massive works of engineering could be undertaken, without spending money.
Another detail is that while England had no standing army it had a standing navy and had done so since the reign of Alfred: this had to be funded centrally, so taxes had to be raised.
I accept your analysis of the English control in France ( it could just as easily be argued that parts of france owned England)
Henry II was particularly devout: a series of crosses marking the funeral stops of Queen Eleanor still stand (in part) Westminster Abbey was expanded during his reign.
In think you really have to get close to the buildings in Oxford to understand their majesty: the workmen may have been working for their food, but the craftsmanship is superb.
I am intrigued as to why you find the Magna Carta an embarrassment. Is it because you think that founding a country on a written constitution is a stupid idea? I which case I concur.

I don't care whether you accept my analyses or not. References to free labor in the middle ages ignores the reality of the situation. The labor was free only to the extent that it could be compelled, and it could only be compelled effectively with peasants who didn't feel they were being abused. Construction projects called for skilled labor, and you didn't get that by trooping in serfs from the nearby manor houses. The idea of great building works being undertaken and accomplished with unskilled labor simply working for their food is hilariously silly.

Your view of the navies of England, whether those of the Anglo-Saxons or of the Normans, is simplistic and over-simplified. The "navy," such as it was, failed to prevent the Norman landing. During the Hundred Years War, the English navy was virtually destroyed by the French at La Rochelle, and by a Franco-Spanish fleet 1419, after which French and Spanish (i.e., Castilian) raided and burned English ports at will. Although large naval forces were maintained at many times in English history, no continuous and continuously funded navy existed until the time of Henry VII, after the Wars of the Roses. It was his son, Henry VIII, who created a Royal Navy to be reckoned with.

There is no reason to have considered Henry II as particularly devout, and the number of times that he imprisoned Eleanor of Aquitaine gives the lie to any claim about his deep and abiding love of her. It was Edward I, who loved his wife Eleanor of Castile, who had crosses erected at the stopping places each night as her body was conveyed to London. The last cross he erected was at the village of Charing, which was then outside London, and is the origin of Charing Cross today. That event took place more than a century after Henry II died.

I don't find Magna Carta (one does not write "the" Magna Carta, at least if one understands Latin) embarrassing, nor does anything i wrote suggest that i do. The person embarrassed by it was King John. Magna Carta is not by any means a written constitution, although it has often been reasonably argued that it lead to the unwritten constitution under which Parliament operates.

I can think of nothing more sensible than having a written constitution, rather than the vague and amorphous "constitution" which governments in England manipulate to their advantage, as they have done for centuries.

Don't know much about English history, do you?

Thank you for correcting my mistake with Eleanor:

The Magna Carta is the correct way of referring to the Physical document: I understand that English is not your first language: however I congratulate you on your efforts.
I merely point out that England had a navy to illustrate the point that some central government was needed. I think to underestimate the power of free labour is foolish: America became wealthy through slavery: Its moral bankruptcy enabled it to get a financial edge over the rest of the world.
I think the testament to the British Navy's effectiveness is that England has only been effectively invaded once since its creation in Anglo Saxon times.
The trouble with having a written constitution is that rights like the
2nd amendment develop a credence that should be laughable. One of the tenets of Magna Carta was the principle of Habeus Corpus, and the right to a fair trial. This is something the Americans might consider, it has worked in Britain since 1215.
Perhaps the most important thing about history is not to repeat its errors, if Americans had more history behind them they might not make such a horlicks of things.

No, silly boy . . . Magna Carta is nominative, translated sensibly into English, the Great Charter--you can have your definite article there, but there is certainly no "correct way" of referring to it as a physical item, your ignorance of English notwithstanding.

I don't deny that some sort of central authority was present in England, even when it didn't have anything worthy of the name of government. That does not authorize foolishness such as your claim about "state function" with regard to an institution such as Oxford, and especially not in the reign of Henry I, when as an institution, and surely, as a university, it did not exist.

As for the "power of free labor," you obviously don't understand the equation of laborer to master in the middle ages. They weren't used for construction projects, in England or anywhere else, because they were not skilled labor, and because their role in the fields was too essential to everyone's livelihood to take them away from that labor. Your remark about about slavery in the United States (an institution foisted onto the Americans by the insistence of the English) shows that you are as ignorant, or more so, about American history as is so obviously the case with the history of England. The United States thrived, it prospered, despite slavery, not because of it. The continued resource of free or relatively cheap land brought in constant immigration, which fueled the industries of the northeast in the United States, while the English owners of cotton mills grew rich and fat off the proceeds of slavery. Small craftsmen and small holders in the slave South were the most immediate and obvious victims of the "peculiar institution," after the slaves themselves. Their only recourse was a continual slide into poverty, or getting out to settle elsewhere, ahead of the arrival of slavery. More than anything else, the hunt for the sperm whale made the United States very, very rich in the 19th century, especially since U.S.S. Essex had destroyed so much of the English whaling fleet in 1813, from which the London whalers never recovered sufficiently to compete with the Nantucket whalers.

Your understanding (or rather lack of understanding) of the American constitution is on a par with your arrogant ignorance of English history. What the gun nut lobby rants about the second amendment is meaningless, only the judicial interpretation of law matters, and the Supreme Court has consistently held that the second amendment binds the Federal government, and not the States, which continue to regulate firearms according to their own preferences. The right of habeas corpus (learn to spell it, it's not that hard) is guaranteed in the United States' constitution.

The trouble with having an unwritten "constitution" is that you get monstrous absurdities like Maggie Thatcher trying to institute a poll tax. Our constitution forbids such enormities.