The Student Rows at Oxford. The town for a time lay in disgrace under interdict and the schools were all but empty. To appease the scholars a new charter was given to the University in 1355, assigning to it the sole right to the assize of bread, beer and wine, as well as of weights and meas ures; and only the fines and forfeits re mained to the Town, in aid of their feefarm rent to the Crown. Seventeen years later, 1372, the King re newed his grant to the University "for the Correction of Victuals,'" and other evidence
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How far the University had progressed during the next fifty years in claiming juris diction over all vendables is shown by an action of the Chancellor, who, in 1428, sum moned before the University Convocation the Mayor, Aldermen and Bailiffs, and sev erally censured them for wresting from common Victuallers certain vendables to the prejudice of the King's University, damage of the public Markat, unjust detriment of the Community of Students, and against the due course of conscience."1 And, in 1445, the
CITY SEAL, OXFORD.
indicates that the "correction" of all mar ketable articles was passing into the hands of the gown. Soon after this last grant we find the Uni versity seeking to extend its privileges over the sales of a monastery by laying claim to the assize of certain vendables at the Frides vyde Fair, but the Canons explained to the King and the claim of the Universitv was dis allowed. No doubt this was a check to the pretensions of the gown, but it was only temporary.
Chancellor fined and imprisoned a butcher, whom he had convicted of selling bad meat, though under what power of imprisonment he acted does not appear, as no authority is quoted. In the following year a baker was similarly convicted, and was imprisoned in Bocardo, "proptcr dcfectum pondcris pants equini." Perhaps the most dramatic scene in the triumph of the University over the Town in the control of the market—and it marks 'Ogle, p. 54-
