Frederick II rightly gains the credit among historians for the foundation of the university of Naples in 1224, with its vocational structure and its close linkage to the royal court. These features marked it out from all other thirteenth-century studia generalia. The emperor conceived it as a training ground for the Roman lawyers and physicians who were needed to keep his administration going. Its brightest graduates could all aspire to employment at court, whether temporary or permanent. From the start the university bore his stamp on all its doings. Yet because Naples was a pro-Guelf city, for the latter part of Frederick's reign and in the reign of Manfred the university fell into the doldrums (although King Manfred is known to have been present at a disputation held by Master Peter of Ireland at the royal court). Charles of Anjou's conquest of the Regno and his rapid development of what Frederick had begun made a considerable difference to its fortunes. Under his assiduous patronage, scholars were recruited from across the Regno and beyond (Charles himself may even have been responsible for having Thomas Aquinas sent to Naples in 1272); masters were paid for from the royal treasury; examinations were conducted under the eyes of royal servants; licences to practise medicine or law were granted by the king; student privileges were carefully protected. In 1294, Charles II nominated the chancellor of the Regno as ex officio rector, head of the university.