e skinners to be much too fierce and cruel,
and a concourse began from all parts, composed not of skinners alone,
but of mechanics of every kind, interceding with the Council for the
criminal." The pleadings of the multitude gained the day, and all the
preparations were removed from the market-place amid the murmurs of
the students. After supper, three senior members of the skinners came
to the Rector, begging for a commutation of the punishment, and offering
to beat Hans themselves in presence of representatives of the
University and the Town Council, with greater ferocity than the public
executioner could do if he were to whip him three times in public. The
Rector replied that he must consult the University, and the proposal
was thrown out in Congregation. On the Saturday after the Feast of (p. 131)
Trinity, the stigma was burned on the criminal's hand, and as a
necessary consequence he was banished.

Town riots do not complete the tale of violence. There were struggles
with Jews, and a Jewish row at Oxford in 1268 resulted in the erection
of a cross, with the following inscription:--

Quis meus auctor erat? Judaei. Quomodo? Sumptu Quis jussit?
Regnans. Quo procurante? Magistri. Cur? Cruce pro fracta ligni.
Quo tempore? Festo Ascensus Domini. Quis est locus? Hic ubi
sisto.

Clerks' enemies were not always beyond their own household. The
history of Paris, the earlier history of Oxford, and the record of
many another University give us instances of mortal combats between
the Nations. The scholars of Paris, in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, had to face the mortal enmity of the monks of the Abbey of
St Germain, the meadow in front of which was claimed by the Faculty of
Arts. The sight of Paris students walking or playing on the
Pre-aux-clercs had much the same effect upon the Abbot and monks as
the famous donkeys had upon the strong-minded aunt of David
Copperfield, but the measures they took for suppressing the nuisance
were less exactly proportioned to the offence. One summer day in 1278,
masters and scholars went for recreation to the meadow, when the (p. 132)
Abbot sent out armed servants and retainers of the monastery to attack
them. They came shouting "Ad mortem clericorum," death to the clerks,
"verbis crudelibus, _ad mortem ad mortem_, inhumaniter pluries
repetitis." A "famous Bachelor of Arts" and other clerks were seriously
wounded and thrown into horrible dungeons; another vic