3 – St Scholastica Day Riot, 1355
Anyone who has lived in a near a university or in a college town will know that students like to drink and, when they drink, tend to become a little rowdy. It might be heartening to learn, then, that this is nothing new at all and indeed, dates back to just about as long as there have been students. The St Scholastica Day Riot of 1355 took place in Oxford, home to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and began when two students got into a drunken brawl with a tavern owner.
The Swindlestock Tavern stood on the corner of St Aldate’s and Queen Street in the centre of Oxford and was a popular haunt of students. Two of them, Walter Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield, were drinking there on the 10th of February in 1355 and got themselves into an argument with John Croidon, the owner of the Tavern, over the standard of drinks served in his establishment. They quarrelled and the two students were alleged to have sworn at the landlord and thrown their drinks at him. So far, so juvenile. It was only when the mayor of the city, John de Bereford, attempted to arrest the two students that the confrontation went from a pub fight to a full blown riot. Over 200 students took to the streets to defend Spryngeheuse and de Chesterfield and were met by crowds of locals who had long been waiting for the chance to have a crack at the students, whom many thought received preferential treatment in Oxford. By the time the fighting subsided two days later, almost 100 people lay dead, the majority of them students.
The locals had decent grounds to be irritated at the students. The University of Oxford had many privileges that made their lives difficult: they could set bread prices within 5 miles of the university, they regulated marketplaces and merchants and their students enjoyed near immunity from laws – indeed, the reason that Spryngeheuse and de Chesterfield had not been arrested was because the Mayor had to ask for specific permission from the head of the University to arrest students. On top of this, the university and its students were exempt from military duties and paid little to the public purse, which were a constant complaint from the local guilds and craftsmen. On the other side, the students felt that the locals were exploiting the university and its students by gouging prices and selling shoddy merchandise. A few years previously, they had decanted en masse to Stamford in Lincolnshire in protest at the perceived slights and had only recently returned to Oxford having been ordered to by the King himself. So when it all kicked off, both sides were not lacking for volunteers.
While the town might have won the battle – in the sense that they killed twice as many students as were killed from their own ranks – they would lose the war. The King ordered that the privileges of the university be extended and the town government was ordered to contribute money to the University – 63 pence, one for each student killed – as well as swearing an oath to uphold the students’ rights and perform a public penance each year in the form of a march through the centre of Oxford. The march would continue annually from 1355 all the way through until 1825, when the Mayor finally decided that enough was enough and refused to participate.
