d history abounds in town and gown riots,
the most famous of which is the battle of St Scholastica's Day (10th
February) 1354. The riot originated in a tavern quarrel; some clerks
disapproved of the wine at an inn near Carfax, and (in Antony Wood's
words) "the vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language, they
threw the wine and vessel at his head." His friends urged the
inn-keeper "not to put up with the abuse," and rang the bell of St
Martin's Church. A mob at once assembled, armed with bows and arrows
and other weapons; they attacked every scholar who passed, and even
fired at the Chancellor when he attempted to allay the tumult. The
justly indignant Chancellor retorted by ringing St Mary's bell and a
mob of students assembled, also armed (in spite of many statutes to
the contrary). A battle royal raged till nightfall, at which time the
fray ceased, no one scholar or townsman being killed or mortally
wounded or maimed. If the matter had ended then, little would have
been heard of the story, but next day the townsmen stationed eighty
armed men in St Giles's Church, who sallied out upon "certain scholars
walking after dinner in Beaumont killed one of them, and wounded
others." A second battle followed, in which the citizens, aided by some
countrymen, defeated the scholars, and ravaged their halls, (p. 126)
slaying and wounding. Night interrupted their operations, but on the
following day, "with hideous noises and clamours they came and invaded
the scholars' houses ... and those that resisted them and stood upon
their defence (particularly some chaplains) they killed or else in a
grievous sort wounded.... The crowns of some chaplains, that is, all
the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical imps flayed off
in scorn of their clergy."

The injured University was fully avenged. The King granted it
jurisdiction over the city, and, especially, control of the market,
and the Bishop of Lincoln placed the townsmen under an interdict which
was removed only on condition that the Mayor and Bailiffs, for the
time being, and "threescore of the chiefest Burghers, should
personally appear" every St Scholastica's Day in St. Mary's Church, to
attend a mass for the souls of the slain. The tradition that they were
to wear halters or silken cords has no authority, but they were each
"to offer at the altar one penny, of which oblation forty pence should
be distributed to forty poor scholars of the University." The custom