As sad as the recent crime wave makes me, somehow a reminder that this is nothing new, well, cheers me up:
From a wider historical perspective, of course, students in the 21st century really are pathetic saps — a shadow of their forebears. As testimony to this decline, today is the anniversary of the biggest student unrest in English history; not 1968 but 1355, the day of the St Scholastica Day Riot in Oxford, which began when two students were served ‘indifferent wine’ in a tavern and fell into an argument with the innkeeper. By the time that the authorities restored order, more than ninety people were dead. …
The row started, according to a chronicler, when some students were served ‘indifferent wine’ in the town’s Swyndlestock Tavern. The two student-clerics, Walter de Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield, had objected to the quality of this wine served by one John de Croydon, the landlord. After asking for something better, they were refused and ‘several snappish words passed’ before Croydon gave them ‘stubborn and saucy language’.
One of the students then threw the wine in his face, and the brawl went out into the street where locals rang the church bells and huge numbers on both sides joined in. The town folk attacked the students ‘some with bows and arrows, others with divers weapons’.
The fighting then broke out again the following morning, and all the scholars fled after ‘some innocent wretches’ were killed and ‘scornfully cast into the house of easement’ – that is, the toilet — a deed the chronicler says was done by ‘diabolical imps’. Those who were injured limped away ‘carrying their entrails in their hands in a most lamentable manner’. As you would. [“When student protests weren’t dominated by ‘snowflakes’,” Ed West, Wrong Side of History]
Follow the link to see just how long it took for the city of Oxford and the University to make up.
