According to John Hardyng, writing in the 1440s, the legendary British king Bladud studied in Athens before founding a university in Stamford.

[2] The legend is reflected in Edmund Spenser's 1590 poem The Faerie Queene in which he writes: And shall see Stamford, tho’ now homely hid,Then shine in learning more than ever didCambridge or Oxford, England’s goodly beams.However, no other evidence has been found of the existence of this institution.

[7][8] Francis Peck and Hensley Henson have argued that the combined strength of these claustral institutions constituted "a university in all but name"; however, Hastings Rashdall considered this conclusion "essentially misleading".

[4] Around the same time, similar petitions went to the Bishop of Lincoln and to King Edward III, referring to the "evil, which we think every way hurtful and pestilential, namely, the new assembly of scholars at the town of Stamford for university instructions", and appealing that "what was begun by improvident rashness may be quickly put an end to by the royal wisdom, and be a warning to future evil-doers".

[7] On 2 August 1334, the king ordered the Sheriff of Lincolnshire, John of Trehampton, to go to Stamford and inhibit everyone, on pain of forfeiture of all their property, from performing any scholastic acts there.

[4][7][10] On 7 January, after apparent inaction, the king wrote to the sheriff to say he had appointed William Trussell to go with him and seize the goods of any disobedient clerks.

[11][12] The antiquary Francis Peck in 1727 published annals of Stamford called Academia Tertia Anglicana (Latin for 'the third English university').

[13] This medieval building, having fallen into disrepair, was demolished in 1688,[13] leaving a gate identified as dating from the early 14th century and bearing an ancient brass knocker.

[13] The knocker, which was assessed as dating from the 12th century, was removed from the gate and is now mounted above the high table in the college's dining hall in Oxford; a replica was placed on the gateway in Stamford in 1961.