It was not long before the Papal Legate was forbidden the English shores, and his bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea.
Simon de Montfort was the friend of Adam Marsh, and the confidant of Grossetete, and it was appropriately enough at Oxford that the great champion of English freedom secured the appointment of a council of twenty-four to draw up terms for the reform of the State. Parliament met at Oxford; the barons presented a long petition of grievances, the council was elected, and a body of preliminary articles known as the Provisions of Oxford was agreed upon. In the following year Henry repudiated the Provisions; civil war ensued, and ended by placing the country in the hands of Simon de Montfort.
The struggle between Henry and the barons then did not leave Oxford unaffected. For any disturbance without was sure to be reflected in a conflict between clerks and laymen, in a town and gown row, of some magnitude. In the present case the appearance of Prince Edward with an armed force—he took up his quarters at the King’s Hall—in the northern suburb gave occasion for an outbreak. The municipal authorities closed the gates against him, and he resumed his march towards Wales.
The scholars now thought it was time that they should be allowed to go out of the city, and finding themselves prevented by the closed wooden doors of Smith Gate, they hewed these down and carried them away, like Samson, into the fields, chanting over them the office of the dead:
“A Subvenite Sancti fast began to sing
As man doth when a dead man men will to pit bring.”
The mayor retorted by throwing some of them into prison, in spite of the Chancellor’s protest. Further arrests were about to be made by the irate townsmen, but a clerk saw them advancing in a body down the High Street, and gave the alarm by ringing the bell of S. Mary’s. The clerks were at dinner, but hearing the well-known summons they sprang to arms and rushed out into the street to give battle. Many of the foe were wounded; the rest were put to flight. Their banners were torn to pieces, and several shops were sacked by the victorious students, who, flushed with victory, marched to the houses of the bailiffs and set them on fire.
“In the South half of the town, and afterwards the Spicery
They brake from end to other, and did all to robberie.”
The mayor, they then remembered, was a vintner. Accordingly a rush was made for the vintnery; all the taps were drawn, and the wine flowed out like water into the streets.
Their success for a moment was complete, but retribution awaited them. The King was appealed to, and refused to countenance so uproarious a vindication of their rights. When they saw how the wind blew, they determined to leave Oxford. It was a question whither they should go and where pitch their scholastic tents. Now it happened that at Cambridge, a town which had ceased to be famous only for eels and could boast a flourishing University of its own, similar disturbances had recently occurred with similar results. Many masters and scholars had removed to Northampton, and to Northampton accordingly, to aid them in their avowed intention of founding a third University, the disconsolate Oxford scholars departed. The situation was evidently serious. But the King induced the Oxonians to return by promising that they should not be molested if they would only keep the peace.