| | | | | A little squabble which is now going on at Oxford between | the University and the town, on the apparently | uninteresting subject of the night-police, deserves at any | rate a passing notice, as probably the last of the long series | of contests about privileges which kindled so fierce an | hostility between the civic and academic bodies during four | or five centuries. It is amusing to see that the parts of the | two combatants are now reversed. The cherished privilege | of

"watch and ward,"

which the University | wrested after such bitter struggles from the town, it now | desires to restore. The town, on the other hand, equally | unmindful of the past, declines to receive it. The truth is | that, with the growth of municipal liberties and the | extension of the city, the cherished privilege of the | University has become a mere burden, and a very costly | one; while to the town the long-vexed question of the | control of its police has ceased to be a matter of | humiliation, and the concession of its opponents presents | itself only in the unattractive guise of a threatened increase | of its rates. | But the long struggle between the city and University | which is thus so oddly brought to mind has more than a | mere Oxford interest. It was in fact part of that great | struggle for municipal liberty, perhaps the most interesting | portion of mediaeval history, which has been so elaborately | described by writers in Italy and Germany, and which | Thierry has sketched picturesquely enough, as far as France | is concerned, but which seems to have wholly escaped the | notice of English historians. Here, of course, the contest | was on a far smaller scale. There was none of that feudal | lawlessness to contend against, the contrast with which | caused the peculiar brilliancy of the liberties of Florence, or | Frankfort, or Bruges. Indeed the word liberty has to modern | ears so much larger and deeper a meaning than it had to the | ears of a burgher of the thirteenth century, that we may find | it difficult to sympathize with struggles for rights so | elementary as the right to trade, the right to justice, the | right of self-government. It was, however, for rights such as | these that each little township in England, as throughout | Europe, had to struggle through long centuries against king, | against baron, against abbot, against university. Each right | was a

"privilege"

bought or wrested from | grudging lords, each had to be bought or fought for again | and again. Even when acquired, they were in constant peril | of loss. The rise of a castle, the settlement of a Jewry, the | foundation of a religious house, would each being | exemptions or counter-privileges fatal to the freedom so | dearly won. Oxford had passed through all these perils | before the charter of Richard I. came to consolidate and | extend her municipal liberties. The Castle of the | Conqueror, the Abbey of Osney founded by its castellans, | the Jewry which had sprung up in the midst of the town, | had greatly curtailed its independent jurisdiction. Within | these narrow bounds, however, the spirit of municipal | freedom lived with a life the more intense that it was so | closely confined. The city throve materially, replacing its | wooden hovels in 1190 with buildings of stone. Lying, as it | did, on the great line of the Thames, it had a traffic of its | own; and its boats paid, with no little grumbling, their toll | to the Abbot of Abingdon. The charter of the Lion-hearted | King, in some sort a child of the city, marks the highest | point to which its liberties ever attained. Free from toll and | due as citizens of London, its burghers transacted their own | political and judicial affairs in their own Parliament; | instead of the one bailiff delegated by the king to collect his | dues, they could boast of a mayor of their own election, | subject only to the confirmation of the Crown. Whatever | may be said of the Angevin kings, they were friends of the | towns, and the prodigal sale of the charters by Richard ere | he started for the Crusade was more than a mere forced | result of his royal prodigality. This sudden revelation of a | freedom, however narrow in its sphere, which had been | quietly won by craftsmen and artisans out of the chaos of | the middle ages, was in fact an omen of the Great Charter | that was to come. The silent growth of the towns, their | sudden advancement of a claim to liberty in the hour of a | king's need, were but the prelude to that greater claim of a | national liberty, advanced in the hour of a king's yet greater | distress, which had sprung naturally out of a people's | growth as silent, yet as certain, as theirs. The University of | Oxford, venerable as it deems itself, is four hundred years | younger than the town; the Lectures of Vacarius, under | Stephen, are the first hint of any instruction given there. Its | growth, however, was wonderfully rapid; fifty years later | the most famous and learned of the English clergy listened | there to the recitation of Giraldus. At the beginning of the | thirteenth century Oxford was without a rival in its own | country, while in European celebrity it had taken rank with | the greater schools of the Western world. It was easy for a | burgher, when a baron rode mail-clad through the hovels | that clustered round the walls of his fortress, or a lord abbot | ambled down the little street to his stately cloister, to | foresee the difficulties of the inevitable struggle with | feudalism or the Church. It was not so easy for a citizen of | Oxford flushed with the pride of his new charter, to believe | that a danger to municipal liberties greater than that from | abbot or baron lay in the mob of half-starved boys that had | poured so suddenly into the midst of the town, and huddled | round their teachers in church-porch or house-porch for | lack of lecture-rooms. The church of St. Mary gave the first | common centre to this mobile crowd; its bell became the | tocsin of the scholars; the masters taught in its aisles, or | gathered their Convocation in its chapels. The town, on the | other hand, fronted this nebulous, incoherent mass of | boyish life with an organization as perfect as theirs was | incomplete. The church of St. Martin, the centre of its life, | rose within sight of the church of St. Mary; the Folkmote | seems to have been held within its walls; under the low | shed outside it, mayor and bailiff administered justice; the | bell above rang out its answer to the tocsin of the | gownsmen. Around, as in some orderly encampment, lay | butchery and spicery and vintnery; the trades clustered | jealously apart in their narrow streets, but knit together in | the bond of the Commune round their mayor as he rode | back from the King's Court at Westminster. Unequal, | however, as the contest seemed, a power greater than that | of kings lay behind the crude unformed mass of scholars | and teachers. The latitude of the mediaeval conception of |

"orders"

gathered the whole educated world | within the magic pale of the Church, freed them from lay | tribunals and lay responsibilities, and subjected them to the | control of the Bishop and the Bishops' Courts alone. The | meanest clerk could look to the protection and the thunders | of the spiritual arm. The street broil of a few frolicsome | boys became an episode in the great struggle between | Church and State. The arrest of a disorderly scholar by the | town serjeants mounted into a breach of those ecclesiastical | liberties for which Anselm had gone into exile and Thomas | had … difficulties would no doubt adjust themselves, the | school authorities would be glad, for the sake of order, to | strengthen the hands of the authorities of the town; the | townsmen would weigh wisely their profit from the | scholars against their arrogance. But to a peaceful | settlement such as this was opposed the whole temper of | the middle age ~~ its jealousy of power, its belief in the | possibility of settling social and economical questions by | sumptuary enactment. The rise of prices seemed, to a | scholar of the fourteenth century as to an artisan of this, a | mere wrong and extortion to be remedied by the law. The | question of police was yet less capable of peaceful | settlement, for in it lay the whole question of the immunity | of the clerical body from civil jurisdiction. Slowly but | steadily the claims of the University advanced, and the | yoke of bondage was laid on the town. The burgesses lost | their control of their own markets, of their own police. | They complained that their houses were scarcely their own, | that once used for lodging they could never be resumed into | private use, that the rental was assessed for them by an | academic board. Their right of justice was practically | annihilated; all mixed cases in which a scholar was a party | fell within the Chancellor's jurisdiction, and its privileges | were gradually extended to all the large body of servants | and scriveners who hovered on the skirts of the University. | During the reign of Henry III. These aggressions went on | with little or no resistance. The great impulse which the | Barons' war gave to freedom aroused in Oxford a fierce | attempt through half a century to shake off her yoke. But | the efforts of Robert de Welles and John Beresford were | less successful than those of De Montfort, and the reign of | Edward III. Saw the bondage of the town complete. The | Reformation, which freed so many boroughs from their | ecclesiastical lords, left Oxford unfreed; the Long | Parliament was a deaf to its plaint as the Parliament of | | the third Edward. It is only by the slow lapse of time, by | the changes of society, by the silent revolution which has | been effected in our civil and our ecclesiastical polity by | the quiet discarding of economic errors, that the chains | have one by one dropt away. It is an amusing end to the | strife to see the University as eager to part, for the most | selfish reasons, from the last badge of its supremacy, as the | town is, for reasons as selfish, eager to force her to retain it.