and the narrations of which have sometimes become Homeric. There are said to be records of Town and Gown Rows as early as the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. And, no doubt, the scholars and the citizens have been in occasional active antagonism from the earliest period of the academic history of Oxford. They rowed, from the beginning, by tongue and by arms, upon all sorts of subjects; prices of provisions, of house-rents, of lodging, of table-board, and even upon points of social dress and etiquette. And, in the early days, they did not always fight with their fists. They went at it, if not with tongs and hammers, at least with knives, daggers, battle-axes, swords, cudgels, stones, and cross-bows. The ancient Statutes of the University show that the students were usually armed, in feudal times, as a mere matter of the necessity of self-protection, in a state of semi-civilization. We read that one who merely threatened a fellow-student with bodily harm was fined twelve pence; that he "who committed an assault by pushing with the shoulder or by smiting with the fist," not only in the foot-ball field, but in the streets or the quads, paid four shillings for the privilege; but if he hit with a cudgel or stone, it cost him two shillings and eight pence more. Ten shillings was the charge for striking an enemy with a short knife,
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