The first great "town and gown row" which we hear of
took place at Oxford in 1209, but when we do hear of it we find the
other University mentioned by the historian in close connection with
the event recorded. The townsmen under great provocation had seized
three of the gownsmen _in hospitio suo_ and threw them into the
gaol. King John came down to make inquiry, and he hung those three,
guiltless though they were, as Matthew Paris assures us. Hereupon
there was intense indignation, and the University dispersed. Three
thousand of the gownsmen migrated elsewhere, some to Cambridge we
learn. Oxford for a while was deserted. This was fifteen years before
the Franciscans settled among us. It was the year in which King John
was excommunicated. There were only three bishops left in England;
the king had worried all the rest away. There was misery and anarchy
everywhere. Yet, strange to say, in the midst of all the bitterness
men _would_ have their sons educated, and the Universities did
not despair of the republic. Shadowy and fragmentary as all the
evidence is on which we have to rely for the history of the
Universities during the twelfth century, it is enough to make us
certain that the friars settled at Cambridge because there they found
scope for their labours. There was undoubtedly a University there
long before they arrived.
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