“for,” they remarked, “by such arbitrements in time past, the Commissary & procters & their officers of the University hath usurped & daily usurpeth upon the town of divers matters contrary to their compositions.”
The struggle passed through several stages. The mayor, one Michael Hethe by name, refused to take the customary oath at S. Mary’s to maintain the privileges of the University. Proceedings were instituted against him. His answer, when he was summoned to appear at S. Mary’s Church and show cause why he should not be declared perjured and excommunicate, was couched in very spirited terms:
“Recommend me unto your master and shew him, I am here in this town the King’s Grace’s lieutenant for lack of a better, and I know no cause why I should appear before him. I know him not for my ordinary.”
The court pronounced him contumacious, and sentenced him to be excommunicated. He was obliged to demand absolution, but he did not abate the firmness of his attitude when he obtained it, for he flatly refused to promise “to stand to the law and to obey the commands of the Church,” though that promise was proposed as a necessary condition of absolution being granted.
Before the end of this year (1530) the town made a direct petition to the King against the University, in which the chief incidents in the hard-fought battle are recounted in detail. Complaint is made, for instance, that the commissary
“Doth take fourpence for the sale of every horse-lode of fresh salmon, & one penny of every seme of fresshe herrings, which is extorcyon”: and again “Another time he sent for one William Falofelde & demanded of him a duty that he should give him a pint of wine of every hogshead that he did set a-broach, for his taste. And the said William answered and said that he knew no such duty to be had, if he knew it he would gladly give it. And thereupon the said Commissary said he would make him know that it was his duty & so sent him to prison: and so ever since, for fear of imprisonment, the said William Falofelde hath sent him wine when he sent for it, which is to the great losse and hindrance of the said William Falofelde.”
In order to compel submission on the part of the city, the mayor and twenty of the citizens were discommoned in 1533, so that
“no schollar nor none of their servants, should buy nor sell with none of them, neither eat nor drink in their houses, under pain of for every time of so doing to forfeit to the Commissary of 6s. and 8d.”
For twenty years the quarrel dragged on, till at last both parties grew weary. In 1542 arbitrators were called in, and Wolsey’s charter was repealed. But under Elizabeth, when in Leicester they had elected a Chancellor of sufficient power to represent their interests, the University began to endeavour to regain the privileges and franchises which, as they maintained, had only been in abeyance. An Act of Parliament was procured which confirmed the old obnoxious charter of 1523, but with a clause of all the liberties of the mayor and town. This clause led the way to fresh acts of aggression on either side, and renewed recriminations and disputes until, on the report of two judges, a series of orders was promulgated by the Privy Council (1575), intended to set at rest the differences between the two bodies for ever. But the result fell short of the intention. The opposition at this time had been led by one William Noble, who lived in the old house known as Le Swynstock. Smarting under the sting of false imprisonment, Noble commenced suits in the Star Chamber against the University, and presented petitions both against that body and the mayor and citizens. His popularity was such that he was elected Member of Parliament for the city.
Wolsey, as we have seen, had taken some steps towards establishing public lectureships in the University. But he provided no permanent endowment for these chairs. His designs developed into a grander scheme. He determined to found a college which, in splendour and resources, should eclipse even the noble foundations of Wykeham and Waynflete, a college where the secular clergy should study the New Learning and use it as a handmaid of Theology and in the service of the old Church. And as Wykeham had established in connection with his college a school at Winchester, so Wolsey proposed to found at his birth-place, Ipswich, and at Oxford, two sister-seats of learning and religion.