of honour in the college hall. For in the meantime the old hall, after a career of over two hundred years, had been converted into a college, founded by William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and Master Sotton, very much as a protest against the new learning which was then being encouraged at Corpus Christi. The continuity of the society is indicated by the fact that the first Principal of the college was the last Principal of the old “Aula Regia de Brasinnose.” The foundation stone was laid in 1509, as the inscription in the old quadrangle, to which a story was added in the time of James I., records.
They were a turbulent crew, these Oxonian forbears of ours. Dearly they loved a fight, and they rose in rebellion against the masters when they were bringing in new statutes for the preservation of the peace. Several were slain on both sides. Nor was it easy to punish the unruly students. Sometimes, after a brawl in which they were clearly in the wrong, the delinquents would flee to Shotover, and there maintain themselves in the forest. At other times, when they had gone too far, and the thunder of the Chancellor’s sentence of excommunication had fallen on their heads as a punishment for attempting to sack the Abbey of Abingdon, or defiling the Church of S. Mary with bloodshed, for sleeping in a tavern, or fighting with the King’s foresters, they would simply leave the University altogether and get away scathless. For the Chancellor’s jurisdiction did not extend beyond Oxford.
A joust or tourney was a certain cause of riot. The passions are easily roused after any athletic contest, whether it be a football match or a bull-fight. Remembering this, we shall best be able to understand why the King found it necessary to forbid any joust or tournament to be held in the vicinity of Oxford or Cambridge (1305).
“Yea, such was the clashing of swords,” says Fuller, “the rattling of arms, the sounding of trumpets, the neighing of horses, the shouting of men all day time with the roaring of riotous revellers all the night, that the scholars’ studies were disturbed, safety endangered, lodging straitened, charges enlarged. In a word, so many war-horses were brought thither that Pegasus was himself likely to be shut out; for where Mars keeps his terms, there the Muses may even make their vacation.”
Any excuse, indeed, was good enough to set the whole town in an uproar. A bailiff would hustle a student; a tradesman would “forestall” and retail provisions at a higher price than the regulations allowed; a rowdy student would compel a common bedesman to pray for the souls of certain unpopular living townsmen on the score that they would soon be dead. The bailiffs would arrest a clerk and refuse to give him up at the request of the Chancellor; the Chancellor, when appealed to by the townsmen to punish some offending students, would unsoothingly retort: “Chastise your laymen and we will chastise our clerks.” The records of town and University are full of the riots which arose from such ebullitions of the ever-present ill-feeling; of the appeals made by either party; and of the awards given by the King, who might be some English Justinian, like Edward I., or might not.
The answer of the townsmen (1298) to the Chancellor’s retort quoted above was distinctly vigorous. They seized and imprisoned all scholars on whom they could lay hands, invaded their inns, made havoc of their goods and trampled their books under foot. In the face of such provocation the Proctors sent their bedels about the town, forbidding the students to leave their inns. But all commands and exhortations were in vain. By nine o’clock next morning, bands of scholars were parading the streets in martial array. If the Proctors failed to restrain them, the mayor was equally powerless to restrain his townsmen. The great bell of S. Martin’s rang out an alarm; ox-horns were sounded in the streets; messengers were sent into the country to collect rustic allies. The clerks, who numbered three thousand in all, began their attack simultaneously in various quarters. They broke open warehouses in the Spicery, the Cutlery and elsewhere. Armed with bows and arrows, swords and bucklers, slings and stones, they fell upon their opponents. Three they slew, and wounded fifty or more. One band, led by Fulk de Neyrmit, Rector of Piglesthorne, and his brother, took up a position in High Street between the Churches of S. Mary and All Saints, and attacked the house of a certain Edward Hales. This Hales was a long-standing enemy of the clerks. There were no half measures with him. He seized his crossbow, and from an upper chamber sent an unerring shaft into the eye of the pugnacious rector. The death of their valiant leader caused the clerks to lose heart. They fled, closely pursued by the townsmen and country-folk. Some were struck down in the streets, and others who had taken refuge in the churches were dragged out and driven mercilessly to prison, lashed with thongs and goaded with iron spikes.
Complaints of murder, violence and robbery were lodged straightway with the King by both parties. The townsmen claimed three thousand pounds’ damage. The commissioners, however, appointed to decide the matter, condemned them to pay two hundred marks, removed the bailiffs, and banished twelve of the most turbulent citizens from Oxford. Then the terms of peace were formally ratified.