of the essential liberty of the Town. "If it should happen that any Clerk (and all the students at this time were clerks) should be taken in a fault (that is, arrested), the Com monalty should not deal with him, but cause him to be delivered to the Bishop, or the Chancellor, to be punished." An oath to keep these provisions was to be taken an nually, and these pledges were to be em bodied in a charter to which the Town must affix its seal. "The chiefest of the Burgh ers," furthermore, "must strip themselves of their apparel, and go barefoot with scourges in their hands to every Church in the Town of Oxford, and there to require of the Parish Priest the benefit of Absolu tion by saying the 5 ist Psalm 'Have mercy on me, О God,' etc." And we are told that the Burghers "performed this penance in every particular, not all in one day, but in as many as there were Churches, by taking for one day, one Church, so that they, as well as others, might dread to do such wick edness again." The Town soon transferred to the Con vent of Eynsham the feast and annual pay ment.1 What compensation the Town gave to the Convent does not appear. Nor is it plain just what bearing these concessions by the Town had upon existing conditions. It is only certain that the conditions were not much improved. In 1227 we find this record in Wood's Annals : 2 "This year the Town of Oxon was taken into the King's hands; but the reason unless some fray wfth the Scholars, I know not." And when we come to the "latter end of next year," 1228, we find that "a dissention aiose between the Scholars and Laics," which was "for a time very fierce, many of 'Lyte, p. 21; Hulton, p. 43. "Austey (Num. Acad.) describes this as the real foundation of the University. Since the Fourteenth Century the amount has been paid punctually by the Crown." 2 1., p. 197-
each party were wounded, and the Inns of the Scholars were broken open. For which cause the Town was interdicted by the Bishop of Lincoln. All lectures and other exercises ceased. Which interdict con tinuing a considerable while, the bodies of such that then deceased were buried in the highways and paths without the Town. At length the strikers and abusers of the Clerks were sent to Rome,3 to be there examined and tried by the Pope's Court." The goods stolen from the Clerks were restored, and the Laics gave the University fifty marks to be divided among poor students. And "it was furthermore ordered, that if like matter should happen hereafter, the sd Laics should submit themselves to the abitrement of four Masters that were then the chiefest in the LTniversity, by whose judgment the fault should be canonically punished, all manner of appeal being laid aside. * In the following year, 1229, a serious town and gown row in Paris, which led to the temporary dissolution of the University, and gave Henry III. the opportunity to in vite foreign students to England, brought large numbers of scholars to Oxford. The increased importance thus given to the University by larger numbers may be seen in the succession of royal briefs. In 1231 the King ordered the Mayor to give the use of the town prison to the Chancellor for confinement of Clerks, and later the Con stable is ordered to give the use of the prison in the Castle for the same purpose.5 In this same year we catch a glimpse of the further difficulties of the loosely organized University in trying to keep order among its motley gathering of students. By another royal brief, the Sheriff is directed to expel all so-called scholars who were not under a '"Such a thing would have been impossible a century later." Rashdall, II., 2, p. 393. 'Wood, I., p. 203. "Rashdall, II., 2, p. 293.
