Richard II / Makers of History

by Jacob Abbott

4. The Pope of Rome, who claimed jurisdiction over the Church in England as well as elsewhere, was constantly coming into collision with the civil power.

The Pope.
His claim of jurisdiction in England.

From some one or other of these several causes, the kingdom of England, in the time of Richard's predecessors, was seldom at peace. Some great quarrel or other was continually going on. There was a great deal of difficulty during the reigns that immediately preceded that of Richard the Second between the kings and the Pope. The Pope, as has already been remarked, was considered the head of the whole Christian Church, and he claimed rights in respect to the appointment of the archbishops, and bishops, and other ecclesiastics in England, and in respect to the government and control of the monasteries, and the abbeys, and to the appropriation and expenditure of the revenues of the Church, which sometimes interfered very seriously with the views and designs of the king. Hence there arose continual disputes and quarrels. The Pope never came himself to England, but he often sent a grand embassador, called a legate, who traveled with great pomp and parade, and with many attendants, and assumed in all his doings a most lofty and superior air. In the contests in which these legates were engaged with the kings, the legates almost always came off conquerors through the immense influence which the Pope exercised over the consciences and religious fears of the mass of the people.

The Pope's legate and the students at Oxford.

Sometimes the visits of the legates and their proceedings among the people led to open broils. At one time, for instance, the legate was at Oxford, where the great University, now so renowned throughout the world, already existed. He was lodged at an abbey there, and some of the scholars of the University wishing to pay their respects to him, as they said, went in a body to the gates of the abbey and demanded admission; but the porter kept them back and refused to let them in. Upon this a great noise and tumult arose, the students pressing against the gates to get in, and the porter, assisted by the legate's men, whom he called to his assistance, resisting them.

In the course of the fray one or two of the students succeeded in forcing their way in as far as to the kitchen of the abbey, and there one of them called upon a cook to help them. But the cook, instead of helping them, dipped out a ladle full of hot broth from a kettle and threw it into the student's face. Whereupon the other students cried out, as the ancient chronicler relates it, "What meane we to suffer this villanie," and, taking an arrow, he set it in his bow, having caught up these weapons in the beginning of the fray, and let it fly at the cook, and killed him on the spot.

Great riot made by the students.

This, of course, greatly increased the excitement. More students came in, and so great was the tumult and confusion that the legate was in terror for his life, and he fled and concealed himself in the belfry of the abbey. After lying in this place of concealment for some time, until the tumult was in some measure appeased, he crept out secretly, fled across the Thames, and then, mounting a horse, made the best of his way to London.

He made complaint to the king of the indignity which he had endured, and the king immediately sent a troop of armed men, with an earl at the head of them, to rescue the remainder of the legate's men that were still imprisoned in the abbey, and also to seize all the students that had been concerned in the riot and bring them to London. The earl proceeded to execute his commission. He apprehended thirty of the students, and, taking them to a neighboring castle, he shut them up there as prisoners.