Scholastica's Day. Thus, by the middle of the
fourteenth century, the strife of Town and Gown had ended in the
complete victory of the latter.
Though the University owed its success to its clerkly character, and
though the Legate backed it with all the power of Rome, yet the
scholars were Englishmen and Liberals first, Catholics next. Thus
they had all English sympathy with them when they quarrelled with the
Legate in 1238, and shot his cook (who, indeed, had thrown hot broth
at them); and thus, in later days, the undergraduates were with Simon
de Montfort against King Henry, and aided the barons with a useful
body of archers. The University, too, constantly withstood the
Friars, who had settled in Oxford on pretence of wishing to convert
the Jews, and had attempted to get education into their hands. "The
Preaching Friars, who had lately obtained from the Pope divers
privileges, particularly an exemption, as they pretended, from being
subject to the jurisdiction of the University, began to behave
themselves very insolent against the Chancellors and Masters."
(Wood, Annals, i. 399.) The conduct of the Friars caused endless
appeals to Rome, and in this matter, too, Oxford was stoutly
national, and resisted the Pope, as it had, on occasions, defied the
King. The King's Jews, too, the University kept in pretty good
order, and when, in 1268, a certain Hebrew snatched the crucifix from
the hand of the Chancellor and trod it under foot, his tribesmen were
compelled to raise "a fair and stately cross of marble, very
curiously wrought," on the scene of the sacrilege.
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