An English record of the founding of a university in Dublin in 1358

A chronicle of the Franciscan convent at Bridgewater, Somerset, in B.L., Cottonian MS Domitian A.ii, preserves a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century record of the founding of a university in Dublin in 1358. The entry, on f. 5v, notes the founding of the university at Dublin as the second entry for the year 1358: Ysabellamater Edwarditercii obiit; vniuersitas diflinie in hibernia incepit. Since the main scribe of the chronicle — perhaps the astronomer John Somer, O.F.M. (fl. 1380-1409) — appears to have recorded his portion of the entries in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, this is one of the earliest extant recordings of this event. The founding in 1358 is confirmed by an entry inRotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellariae Hiberniae calendariumrecording, according to Fitzmaurice and Little, ‘the King[’s promise [of] special protection to scholars travelling thither’.