RIME OXONIENSES.* MB. HUTTON might have made more of his
subject, which is, indeed, one of great and varied interest, trivial, perhaps, in itself, but connected with great issues of history. And there are signs that his knowledge is not always profound. Once or twice he might have saved himself from a mistake by con- sulting even a book so popular and so recent as Mr. Andrew Clark's Colleges of Oxford. Still, he has made an entertaining little volume, one which will probably be read, when a graver and more laborious work might have been neglected.
The wars that have raged in Oxford from and even before the foundation of the University, down almost to our own time, have been both civil and foreign, if we may describe by the first term conflicts between opposing parties of scholars, and by the second the feuds, never quite extinguished, between scholars and townsmen. Now and then they have been, to borrow a Tacitean phrase, perntixta, when the town has espoused this or that academical faction. The civil strifes are described in Mr. Hutton's first chapter, "The Battles of the Nations." The term "Nation," still surviving in the Scot- tish Universities, which, indeed, resemble mediwval Oxford and Cambridge in more ways than one, was used to denote distinctions of birth in the miscellaneous multitude of students that crowded the halls and schools of Oxford in the early days of its history. The University was then cosmo- politan, a character which it lost as time went on, and which it is in a way recovering in these later times, only that its foreign element comes, not from France, Germany, and Italy, but from far remoter regions of the East, the West, and the South, from Japan, from India, from the Greater Britain beyond the Atlantic and the Pacific. Two nations only acquired historical importance, the Northern and the Southern, an importance so great that they were actually recognised by the University, each being represented by one of the two Proctors, the Tribunes, as they may be called, of the academi- cal plebs, and by a similar partition of other academical posts. Collisions were frequent during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Northerners were commonly the weaker of the two parties. Their defeat in 1334 led to a secession to Stamford, a secession so formidable in point of numbers, and lasting so long, as serioasly to alarm the two Universities. Cambridge,
• Rim Oratienser. By Samuel F. Hutton. Oxford : Blackwell. 1892.
though less troubled by these internal discords, was interested In this affair. A petition was presented through the Queen to Edward III., praying that he would put down this dangerous rival. The Sheriff of Lincolnshire was ordered to put a stop to all scholastic exercises in Stamford, "University extension" not being regarded with favour in those days. Mr. Hutton tells us that as late as 1827, candidates for an Oxford degree were required to swear that they would not attend or give lectures at Stamford.
In 1349, the Nations quarrelled over the election of a Chan- cellor, who was not then the serene and dignified official of the present order of things. William de Hawksworth, who. had been appointed Provost of Oriel in the preceding year, was the candidate of the Northerners, whose stronghold was Oriel, founded by Adam de Brome, Chancellor of Dtirham, some forty years before. The Southerners, repre- sented by Merton, had for their candidate John Wylliot, Fellow of that College. (Merton and Oriel were then the chief rivals among the Colleges, University, Balliol, and Queen's being of less importance.) John Wylliot and his party attacked Hawksworth and his friends in St. Mary's Church, where he and his Proctors were taking part in what would seem to have been an inaugural service. Mr. Hutton, quoting, it would seem, from some author, whose name, however, he does not give, writes : "Such conduct drew forth a Bull from Pope John XXII. against brawling in the church or yard of St Mary." If he had looked into a manual of dates, he would have seen that Pope John XXII. ceased to be Pope in 1334. The Bull, in fact, was a document which had been issued in 1331. The King had asked that the process of "reconcilia- tion," not unfrequently required in those turbulent times, especially when the University Church was in question, might be performed by the Abbots of Oseney and Rushy, acting for the Bishop of Lincoln, the diocesan. Pope John replied by a Bull that absolutely forbade all meetings whatsoever in the church or yard ; and it was this document which the Pro- vost of Oriel produced to discomfit his rival.
Contemporaneously with these conflicts, and after they had ceased with the prevalence of the Collegiate system, came the "Town and Gown" struggles. Mr. Hutton ingeniously divides them into two epochs,—" The Struggle for Life," and "The Survival of the Fittest." The first began with a great secession of the scholars, three of whose number had been hanged by the burghers under authority from King John. The Pope put the town under an interdict, and pardon was ob- tained only by great humiliation on the part of the inhabitants, and by a concession, obtained by a Legate with an eye to busi- ness, that the Inns and Halls were to be let at half the former rents,—Colleges, of course, had not then come into being. An annual payment of fifty-two shillings was imposed by way of fine. The town arranged for its payment by Eynsbam Abbey, and it is still paid by the Crown, as the heir of the Abbey's possessions. Mr. Anstey, quoted by our author, speaks of it as the earliest of the University endowments. The University, indeed, got the better of these straggles, not always at the time, but in the after-results. The riots of 1297 were imme- diately disastrous to the Oxford clerks, of whom some were killed and many wounded ; but the effect of them was to establish the University privileges on a stronger basis than ever. About half-a-century later, came the dreadful battle of St. Scholastica's Day. The first offence was given by some clerks, one of them, a country parson who had come to Oxford for a little amusement, objecting to the wine of a certain tavern called Swyndlestock. The vintner was insolent, and the clerk threw wine and vessel at his head. The bell of St. Martin's was rang, and the townsmen assembled in arms. The summons was answered by another
from the bell of St. Mary's, which called the scholars to defend themselves. The first day passed without much
damage being done. On the next there was a fierce struggle, the scholars holding their own till the country people— auxiliaries of the town, corresponding to the " bargees " of later days—crowded in to the number of two thousand, carrying a black flag,— " Clamant • Havock' et ' Havock ; ' non sit qui salvificetur ; Smyt fast, give gode knocks,' nullus post lime dominetur."
The scholars fled, and their enemies broke into and spoiled the halls. The next day things were still worse ; fourteen halls were pillaged. Finally all the scholars that were not pro. tected by the strong walls and gates of the Colleges (of which
six then existed) fled from the town. This, too, turned to the ultimate profit of the University, for out of it grew the singular control still exercised by the University over the Oxford markets. It may be doubted whether the jurisdiction of the Oxford "Clerks of the Market" has its parallel else- where. As for the tradition that the Mayor of Oxford annually attended the University Church with a halter round his neck (modified by courtesy into a silken thread), it seems to be a myth.
The old feud never broke out again so furiously, but it lasted for centuries afterwards ; indeed, older Oxonians will remember that no inconsiderable tumult used to occur on the 5th of November. As late as 1867, there was a fatal case of assault by a townsman on an undergraduate. The rixx of later times have rather returned to the form of the " national " fends,—at least, so far as these were mixed up with philo- sophical and theological disputes. Puritans and Cavaliers in the seventeenth century, Jacobites and Hanoverians in the eighteenth, carried on the old quarrels of Realists and Nominalists, Wycliffites and Orthodox. As time passed on, their method of settling their differences has become more pacific. Now the battles are fought out in the arena of the Sheldonian, and the weapons—not to speak of the somewhat halting Latin or clumsy English of academical orators—are the pins with which the Proctors mark the votes. Even these great field-days are infrequent. We look back with something like regret, to the battle-field on which the Liberals won an almost solitary victory, when they carried Dean Stanley as a "Select Preacher" against the opposition of Archdeacon Denison and J. C. Burgon. Lately Oxford has witnessed nothing more exciting than the dispute on the admission of women to the Honour Moderations.
Mr. Hutton has given us a readable book ; but he is a little crude in his judgments, witness some wild talk about the Schoolmen (pp. 9-10), which it would be too unkind to quote. Some interesting pictures of buildings now demolished help to bring before us the Oxford of the past.
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