rois" and "Norrois" clerks are
imprisoned in Oxford Castle after a battle, that the sheriff declares
escapes are sure to occur.[249] In 1354 a student, seated in a tavern,
"in taberna vini," pours a jug of wine over the tavern-keeper's head,
and breaks the jug upon it. Unfortunately the head is broken as well;
the "laity" take the part of the victim, pursue the clerks, kill twenty
of them, and fling their bodies "in latrinas"; they even betake
themselves to the books of the students, and "slice them with knives and
hatchets." During that term "oh! woe! no degrees in Logic were taken at
the University of Oxford."[250] In 1364 war breaks out again between the
citizens and students, "commissum fuit bellum," and lasts four days.

Regulations, frequently renewed, show the nature of the principal
abuses. These laws pronounce: excommunication against the belligerents;
exclusion from the University against those students who harboured
"little women" (_mulierculas_) in their lodgings, major excommunication
and imprisonment against those who amuse themselves by celebrating
bacchanals in churches, masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves or
flowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292,
prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversations
together, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis," and
from singing improper songs.[251]

The lectures bore on Aristotle, Boethius, Priscian, and Donatus; Latin
and French were studied; the fellows were bound to converse together in
Latin; a regulation also prescribed that the scholars should be taught
Latin prosody, and accustomed to write epistles "in decent language,
without emphasis or hyperbole, ... and as much as possible full of
sense."[252] Objectionable passages are to be avoided; Ovid's "Art of
Love" and the book of love by Pamphilus are prohibited.

From the thirteenth century foundations increase in number, both at
Oxford and Cambridge. Now "chests" are created, a kind of pawnbroking
institution for the benefit of scholars; now a college is created like
University College, the most ancient of all, founded by William of
Durham, who died in 1249, or New College, established by the illustrious
Chancellor of Edward III. William of Wykeham. Sometimes books are
bequeathed, as by Richard de Bury and Thomas de Cobham in the fourteenth
century, or by Humphrey of Gloucester, in the fifteenth.[253] The
journey to Paris continues a t