I lived in Oxford for a while and took one of those touristy tours round the colleges. I was surprised to learn that each college drew scholars from a particular part of the country. This was partly because it was impossible for people from different parts of Britain (as late as the 14th Century - or even later?) to understand each other. Scholarly discourse had to take place in Latin as it was the only language that everyone could understand. So understanding each other across relatively small boundaries is a fairly recent phenemenon.