The earliest academic dress worn in England was undoubtedly clerical. At the establishment of Oxford and Cambridge, students were ordained into either minor or major clerical orders, and were thus confined by the dress regulations of that order. These clerics wore robes with a cowl or hood, which then evolved (by the mid fifteenth century) into the garments illustrated at right.
The gown, hood, and mortarboard which we generally associate with Cambridge and Oxford has evolved from the sixteenth century Tudor loose robe and the biretta cap, sported by our friend Erasmus in the inset above.