Excerpt from On Some Social Distinctions at Harvard and Yale: Before the Revolution

In the catalogues of graduates of Harvard College down to 1772, and in those of Yale down to 1767, the names of the students in the successive classes are placed - not alphabetically, as now, and not as at Oxford or Cambridge in the order of application for admission, or according to scholastic merit, but - in an order supposed to indicate the rank of their respective fathers or families.

Such a system was a wholly natural consequence of the conditions of life to which the founders of Harvard had been accustomed in the mother country, and although no directly corresponding usage is traceable at either of the English universities, where these founders had themselves been trained, yet I believe we can connect the system logically with the distinctions there observed. Thus the revised matriculation statutes adopted at Oxford in 1565, and in force in the time of the Harvard founders, adjusted the scale of fees for the ceremony of matriculation in accordance with the social rank of the fathers of the candidates, from 13 s. 4 d. paid by the son of a prince, duke or marquis, down to 4 d., the charge to plebei filius, which would naturally be understood as the son of a yeoman, and 2 d. to a servitor. The phrase at Cambridge corresponding to plebei filius was mediocris forlunoe, and in practice both were, I fancy, elastic enough to include a large part of the ordinary students.

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