When the free commonwealth of the masters gathered in the aisles of St.Mary's all had an equal right to counsel, all had an equal vote in the final decision.

Treasury and library were at their complete disposal.
It was their voice that named every officer, that proposed and sanctioned every statute.

Even the Chancellor, their head, who had at first been an officer of the Bishop, became an elected officer of their own.
[Sidenote: The Universities and the Church] If the democratic spirit of the Universities' threatened feudalism, their spirit of intellectual enquiry threatened the Church.

To all outer seeming they were purely ecclesiastical bodies.

The wide extension which mediaeval usage gave to the word "orders" gathered the whole educated world within the pale of the clergy.