The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  Twenty years after this there was an outright battle between the various national factions, the ‘Northern English and the Welsh’ – ‘with banners and flags among them to distinguish each division’ – winning the victory over the ‘Southern English’ after ‘divers on both sides [had been] slain and pitifully wounded’.5

  Then, towards the end of the century, there was more serious rioting when, on Friday before the feast of St Mathias 1298, the bailiff ‘was at Carfax carrying his mace, as is due’. ‘There came some clerks at the University to fight and disturb the peace, and laid hands on the Bailiff and trampled on him and took away his mace; whereupon hue and cry was made.’ One of the students was arrested; immediately ‘a multitude of clerks with their followers with force of arms’ appeared upon the scene, released him and attacked the bailiff’s house. ‘Further on Saturday morning following, came the clerks to St Mary’s Church and took all the lay-folk they could find, beat them and wickedly trampled on them, and they killed one … and dragged [another] into the church, and beat him before the high altar, wounded and evil treated him, and threatened all the burgesses with robbery and murder.’6

  One of the most serious of all riots occurred in 1354 when a party of scholars were drinking at Swyndlestock Tavern and, having been served some indifferent wine by the landlord, John of Croydon, ‘several snappish words passed between them’. ‘At length the Vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language’, they threw the wine and vessel at his head. His friends then rang the bell of St Martin’s, and a crowd of townsfolk attacked the students, ‘some with bows and arrows, others with divers weapons’.

  The Chancellor [of the University] perceiving what great danger they were in, caused the University Bell at St Mary’s to be rung out, whereupon the Scholars got bows and maintained the fight with the Townsmen till dark night, at which time the fray ceased … On the next day … the Townsmen subtilly and secretly sent about fourscore men armed with bows and arrows and other manner of weapons into the parish of St Giles in the north suburb; who … having discovered certain Scholars walking after dinner in Beaumont (being the same place we now call St Giles’s Field), issued out of St Giles’s Church, shooting at the said Scholars … One Scholar they killed without the Walls, some they wounded mortally, others grievously and used the rest basely. All which being done without any mercy, caused an horrible outcry in the Town; whereupon the Town bell being rung out first and after that the University bell, divers Scholars issued out armed with bows and arrows in their own defence and of their companions, and having first shut and blocked up some of the Gates of the Town (lest the country people who were then gathered together in innumerable multitudes might suddenly break in upon their rear in an hostile manner and assist the Townsmen who were now ready prepared in battle array and armed with their targets also) they fought with them and defended themselves till after Vesper tide; a little after which time, entered into the Town by the west gate about two thousand countrymen with a black dismal flag, erect and displayed. Of which the Scholars having notice, and being unable to resist so great and fierce a company, they withdrew themselves to their lodgings.

  The countrymen advanced crying Slea, Slea … Havock, Havock … Smyt fast, give gode knocks … Finding no Scholars in the streets to make any opposition, [they] pursued them, and that day they broke open five Inns, or Hosties of Scholars with fire and sword … Such Scholars as they found in the said Halls or Inns they killed or maimed, or grevously wounded. Their books and all their goods which they could find, they spoiled, plundered and carried away. All their victuals, wine, and other drink they poured out; their bread, fish &c. they trod under foot. After this the night came on and the conflict ceased for that day.

  The next day, however, there was more violence. Although the surviving and subdued scholars remained indoors, ‘the Townsmen, desiring to heap mischief upon mischief … with hideous noises and clamours came and invaded the Scholars’ houses which they forced open with iron bars and other engines; and those that resisted … they killed or else in a grievous sort maimed.’

  Some innocent wretches, after they had killed, they scornfully cast into houses of easment, others they buried in dunghills, and some they let lie above ground. The crowns of some Chaplains, viz. all the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical imps flayed off in scorn of their Clergy. Divers others whom they had mortally wounded, they haled to prison, carrying their entrails in their hands in a most lamentable manner …

  The wickedness and outrage continuing … all the Scholars being fled divers ways, our Mother the University of Oxon which had but two days before many sons is now almost forsaken and left forlorn.7

  Eighteen months later the king was still issuing pleas to the masters to re-establish lectures in the town.

  After this ‘great slaughter of 1354’ there were no comparable battles in Oxford between the scholars and the townsmen. But there were still occasional fights between the two, while the skirmishing between the ‘nations’ continued unabated. In 138g a gang of English scholars

  … fought after all the Welshmen abiding and studying in Oxford, shooting arrows before them in diverse streets and lanes as they went, crying out, ‘War, war, sle, sle, sle, the Welsh doggys and her whelps and ho so looketh out of his howese, he shall in good sorte be dead.’

  And certain persons they slew and others they grievously wounded, and some of the Welshmen who bowed their knees to abjure the town, they the Northern Scholars led to the gates, causing them first to piss on them, and then to kiss the place on which they had pissed. But being not content with that, they, while the said Welshmen stooped to kiss it, would knock their heads against the gates in such an inhuman manner, that they would force blood out of the noses of some, and tears from the eyes of others.8

  There were occasional assaults, too, upon Jews, upon the so-called ‘ludi’ who spied on scholars whom they caught not speaking Latin, and upon proctors who, armed with poleaxes and accompanied by assistants, patrolled the streets of the town in an effort to keep the peace. Oxford was also frequently disturbed, so it was reported in 1410, ‘by persons who in the guise of scholars abide in divers places within the university … who sleep all day and at night lurk about taverns and brothels, bent on robbing and homicide’. Towards the middle of the century there was such a sharp decline in the number of scholars that it was feared that the university might disintegrate. In 1435 the Duke of Gloucester received a letter in which he was warned that it was ‘reduced to the greatest misery’. Lectures had ceased and ‘a complete ruin of education’ was imminent. In 1456–7 only twenty-seven scholars took the Master of Arts degree.9

  Cambridge was no less riotous than Oxford. There was a savage fight between the scholars and townspeople in 1261; in 1381 the townsmen destroyed the University’s charter and records; and in 1418 the mayor, bailiffs and commonalty of Cambridge were driven to complain to the king:

  That on the vigil of St James the Apostle, many scholars, with the assent and at the excitation and abetting of the before mentioned persons, armed in a warlike manner, caused great terror to the mayor, by laying in wait to kill him and his officers, if they on that night had issued out of their houses; and that when they perceived they, could not effect their malicious purpose, they affixed on the mayor’s gate a certain schedule, to his great scandal, and so that the mayor and burgesses dared not to preserve the peace.10

  In an attempt to maintain discipline students at both Oxford and Cambridge were heavily fined for a variety of offences. In 1432 at Oxford, where the ‘unrestrained continuance of execrable dissensions’ had ‘almost blackened its charming manners, its famous learning and its sweet reputation’, the masters of the university unanimously ordered that whoever was convicted of disturbing the peace should be fined ‘according to the quantity and quality of his crime, over and above the usual penalties, viz’:

  For threats of personal violence, twelvepence; for carrying of weapons against the statute, two shillings; for drawing weap
ons of violence, or pushing with the shoulder or striking with the fist, four shillings; for striking with a stone or club, six shillings and eight-pence; for striking with a knife, dagger, sword, axe, or other weapon of war, ten shillings; for carrying a bow and arrow with intent to harm, twenty shillings; for gathering armed men or other persons and conspiring to hinder the execution of justice or to inflict bodily harm on anyone, thirty shillings; for resisting the execution of justice, or going about by night, forty shillings as well as satisfaction to the injured party.11

  Fines proving ineffective, however, the birch was commonly used from the end of the fifteenth century for numerous offences other than riotousness. The Statutes of Brasenose College, for instance, ordered birching for unprepared lessons, playing or talking during lectures, and for speaking in English rather than Latin. There were disagreements as to how old an undergraduate should be before flogging was considered an inappropriate punishment: Dr John Caius of Cambridge fixed the age limit at eighteen; Thomas Wolsey of Oxford decided that it should be twenty.

  Unruly as the scholars so often were, the crown displayed great interest in preserving Oxford and Cambridge and in supporting the university authorities in their disputes with those of the town. The university at Northampton was suppressed in 1265 as it offered a threat to Oxford; and in about 1334 a royal writ forbade seventeen masters from lecturing at Stamford and instituting what promised to be a successful university there.12 The burgesses of both Oxford and Cambridge were in regular receipt of rebukes from the court for not treating the scholars with due respect. In 1300 King Edward I ordered the townspeople of Oxford to clean up their town, to stop dumping rubbish in the streets and boiling fat on the pavement. ‘The air is so corrupted and infected,’ his letter continued, ‘that an abominable loathing [is] diffused among the aforesaid masters and scholars.’13

  King Henry III delivered an equally severe reprimand to the burgesses of Cambridge on another matter:

  You are aware that a multitude of scholars from divers parts, as well from this side the sea as from overseas, meets at our town of Cambridge for study, which we hold a very gratifying and desirable thing …

  We have heard, however, that in letting your houses you make such heavy charges to the scholars lying among you, that unless you conduct yourselves with more restraint and moderation towards them in this matter, they will be driven by your exactions to leave your town and, abandoning their studies, leave our country which we by no means desire.14

  Fairer rents were, therefore, to be agreed between two Masters of the University and ‘two good and lawful men’ of the town.

  At Oxford as at Cambridge, scholars lived in private houses as lodgers or in hospices which were established by the townspeople for profit. After about 1200, however, halls were established and students were encouraged to live in these rather than in ordinary lodging-houses so that the university authorities would have more control over them. In 1313 the principals or wardens of halls at Oxford were required to take an oath that ‘should they know of anyone from their society who is organising meetings or showing agreement with those organising them, or going to gatherings … or disturbing the peace of the University … or holding a brothel in the house or carrying arms or causing in whatever way discord between southerners and northerners, they should within three days of learning about it report it to the Chancellor who shall punish all the disturbers of the peace with imprisonment’.15

  Since university halls were usually so uncomfortable and so strictly supervised, most students preferred to take lodgings which, while often spare enough, might be made quite comfortable like those of Chaucer’s Oxford student, the lodger in the house of a carpenter, who had made

  Some studies in the arts, but all his fancy

  Turned to astrology and geomancy …

  This lad was known as Nicholas the Gallant,

  And making love in secret was his talent,

  For he was very close and sly, and took

  Advantage of his meek and girlish look.

  He rented a small chamber in the kip

  All by himself without companionship.

  He decked it charmingly with herbs and fruit

  And he himself was sweeter than the root

  Of liquorice, or any fragrant herb.

  His astronomic text-books were superb,

  He had an astrolabe to match his art

  And calculating counters laid apart

  On handy shelves that stood above his bed.

  His press was curtained coarsely and in red;

  Above there lay a gallant harp in sight

  On which he played melodiously at night

  With such a touch that all the chamber rang;

  It was The Virgin’s Angelus he sang,

  And after that he sang King William’s Note,

  And people often blessed his merry throat.

  And that was how this charming scholar spent

  His time and money, which his friends had sent.16

  Had he lived a few years later this student would not have been able to live in lodgings, for in about 1410 residence in halls became compulsory for all undergraduates. By then several colleges had also been founded, originally as self-governing religious bodies, principally for graduates but later becoming undergraduate societies.17 University College, Balliol and Merton were all established in the thirteenth century, as was Peterhouse at Cambridge. Merton was founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton, ‘formerly Chancellor of the illustrious Lord the King of England’. Its statutes were promulgated in 1270 and, among other rules, decreed:

  There is to be one person in every chamber where scholars are resident, of maturer age than the others, who is to have a superintendence of the others and who is to make report of their morals and advancement … While in their chambers the scholars must abstain from noise and interruption to the fellows and apply themselves with all diligence to study and when they speak they must use the Latin tongue … Care and diligent solicitude must be taken that no persons be admitted but those that are chaste, of good conduct, peaceful, humble, indigent, of ability for study and desirous of improvement … The scholars who are appointed to the duty of studying in the house are to have a common table, and a dress as nearly alike as possible … The scholars are to have a reader at meals, and in eating together they are to observe silence and to listen to what is read … There shall be a constant succession of scholars devoted to the study of letters, who shall be bound to employ themselves in the study of Arts or Philosophy, the Canons or Theology. Let there be also one member of the collegiate body who shall be a grammarian, and must entirely devote himself to the study of grammar.18

  Other colleges later specifically proscribed walking on the grass and destroying plants; keeping ferrets, hawks or hunting dogs; preventing their fellow-scholars from studying by ‘noisiness, shouting, playing a musical instrument or any sort of clamour or noisiness’; ‘struggling, chorus-singing, leaping, singing, shouting, tumult and inordinate noise’; playing dice in public and ‘tumultuous games’ in hall. At New College even chess was included in a list of forbidden ‘noxious, inordinate and unhonest Games’. Yet the regulations at most colleges seem to have been widely disregarded. Some fifty years after its foundation in 1458 Magdalen College, Oxford, was revealed by an inspection ordered by the Visitor, the Bishop of Winchester, to contain an inordinate number of miscreant fellows:

  Stokes was unchaste with the wife of a tailor.

  Stokysley baptized a cat and practised witchcraft.

  Gregory climbed the great gate by the tower, and brought a Stranger into College.

  Kendall wears a gown not sewn together in front.

  Pots and cups are very seldom washed, but are kept in such a dirty state that one sometimes shudders to drink out of them.

  Gunne has had cooked eggs at the Taberd in the middle of the night.

  Kyftyll played cards with the butler at Christmas time for money.

  Smyth keeps a ferret in College, Lenard a
sparrow-hawk, Parkyns a weasel, while Morcott, Heycock and Smyth stole and killed a calf in the garden of one master Court.19

  The University as a whole at that time forbade swearing, games of chance, being out after eight o’clock at night in winter and nine o’clock in summer, sharing a bed with a friend without permission, walking abroad with a companion, not attending lectures, recitations and disputations which were all compulsory, and making Odious comparisons of country to country, nobility to ignobility, Faculty to Faculty’. Every offence carried an appropriate fine, from ¼d for speaking in a language other than Latin to 6s 8d for an assault which led to the spilling of blood. Many of these regulations applied not only to undergraduates but also to the citizens of Oxford, over whom the Chancellor had wide-ranging authority. Citizens were, for example, punished for keeping late hours and for playing cards all night as well as for such offences as brewing bad ale. In 1440 the Chancellor expelled from the city one Lucy Colbrand, a prostitute, who had caused ‘litigation, fornication, fights and homicides in the University’.20

  Living conditions for the scholars were far from comfortable. The bedrooms were unlikely to have either fires or glass in the windows: as late as 1598 the junior fellows of King’s College, Cambridge, still had to be content with wooden shutters rather than glass panes. Rooms were usually shared with at least one other scholar, and those under fifteen were commonly allotted a companion with whom they must share a bed. Furniture was sparse and seems usually to have been limited to forms, stools, chests, chairs and truckle beds with straw palliasses. Occasionally pitchers and bowls for washing are mentioned in inventories or a ‘cistern and trough of lead’. Rarely could a scholar afford the luxury of hangings or the bed-coverings described in the will of a chaplain in 1447 as comprising, among other items, ‘one coverlyt of reed and blew with ostryche fetherys … one coverlyt of grene and yellow poudred with roses’.21