As a Yank who's discovered the charms of University Challenge during quarantine, one of my favorite parts of each episode comes at the beginning, when Jeremy Paxman gives a brief history of each of the competing schools. (Can't recommend the show enough for any trivia fans; it's Jeopardy cranked up to 11.)
While watching, I've been struck both by the enormous chronological gap between the founding of the "ancient" and "red brick" universities and the fact that England's largest, wealthiest cities--London included--were apparently without institutions of higher learning until the middle of the 19th century.
This interregnum wasn't observed on the continent or in the colonies, so I'm left to wonder how we can explain it. Were Oxford and Cambridge simply sufficient, and it made more sense to devote resources to founding new constituent colleges instead of wholly new universities? Were there abortive attempts elsewhere that failed for some unifying reason? Was there just not as much demand for tertiary education as I imagined there would be?
I appreciate any insights you can offer!
In short, it was illegal to found any other university in England for, as you note roughly 600 years. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge jealously guarded their privileges as the two ancient universities of the country and successfully prevented the granting of the required charters to confer degrees and thus be a functioning university. There was, in fact, an abortive attempt to establish a new university at Northampton between 1261-165. After one of the many town-gown riots in Oxford a group of disgruntled academics upped sticks and moved to Northampton to set up on their own, in much the same way that Cambridge was founded. However, they later got on into the bad books of Henry III when they resisted his siege of the city. When the king was victorious he issued a charter banning the establishment of a university in Northampton which was only repealed in 2005. We should note the wording of the charter. It said that "we have learned on the testimony of men worthy of belief that, if the university remains at Northampton, no small damage would be incurred by our borough of Oxford, which is of ancient creation, has been confirmed by our ancestors, and is generally approved as a convenience to students. We should on no grounds be willing that this should happen, especially as all the bishops agree that for the honour of God, the advantage of the church of England and the well being of the students, the university should be removed from Northampton." If we are to take the text at face value, it would seem that Oxford got to the king and, cartel style, persuaded him to shut it down to help protect their monopoly on higher education in England.
It should also be noted that there were several other centres of higher education in England which weren't universities. The Inns of Court, for instance, handled the training of secular lawyers. Further, from approximately 1700 onwards a lot of the most innovative medical research and training took place in hospitals such as St Thomas's and St Barts in London. This was a route for non-conformists and those of a lower social class who could not attend university into the medical profession. Priestly the discoverer of oxygen, never attended university because he was a non conformist.
Meanwhile, Scotland had University of St Andrews – founded 1413, University of Glasgow – founded 1451, University of Aberdeen – founded 1495, and University of Edinburgh – founded 1583.
Was there pressure from Oxford and Cambridge to restrict Scots academic institutions? I hope there was English demand for more spaces than just those 2 English institutions. Did prospective college students go abroad? Mostly to Scotland? To what extent was Scotland fighting above its weight class compared to other non-British countries in the Renaissance/Enlightenment periods? ...and how much of this is due to English monopolistic behavior with respect to its academic institutions?