Cambridge and Oxford were the public schools of England. Oxford especially was in great repute. Monasteries sent up to her their younger monks; students visited her from other countries; her ranks were constantly replenished with the youth of all classes. There was as keen an ambition in those days to send a son to the university, as there is now in Ireland to equip a boy for Maynooth. It is impossible to fix with certainty the date of Wycliffe’s entrance on university life, or to say how long his