This thesis deals with the institutional histories of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in an attempt to establish their role within the English state and within English culture in the Early Modem period. It seeks to explain the complex relationship between social definitions of masculinity and the translation of those conceptions via the universities to a student population whose influence and power upon their leaving of those precincts would be felt throughout the nation. It further argues that education at Oxford or Cambridge was not relegated to the college halls alone, but was the result of both official and unofficial instruction conducted both within and without the university setting. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)